Two Years Later, is the Pandemic Finally Over?

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the WHO declaring Covid a global pandemic. 

As it sits, the omicron wave has nearly subsided in the US. Are we near the light at the end of the tunnel, or is the virus primed to make a resurgence?

🔢 By the numbers... New daily cases in the US have dropped 95+% since peaking in mid-January. As of Thursday, the seven-day moving average was 37,879, per CDC data – its lowest number since last July.

• Daily Covid deaths, a metric that lags behind cases and hospitalizations, have fallen 34% over the last two weeks to reach the lowest total so far this year.
• More than 81% of eligible Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, which translates to nearly 77% of the entire population.

✋ Yes, but… Many health experts still warn of the potential for a new Covid variant to emerge, especially given that nearly three billion people haven’t yet received a vaccine.

• So far, new variants of concern have not evolved from the previous dominant strain – meaning there’s no guarantee that a potential new variant will come from omicron, which is relatively mild compared to other strains.

🌎 The big picture: Every three months since January 2020, the WHO has convened a panel of expert advisers to assess whether Covid still meets the threshold for a global pandemic. And every three months – most recently this past January – the panel has unanimously agreed that it does. 

But that hasn’t stopped several individual nations, like Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, from functionally declaring an end to the pandemic in their countries.

+Flash poll: Do you consider the pandemic to be over?

Yes

No