Tag: coronavirus

Senior writer Kara Grant co-authored this report.

March 15, 2023 – As we approach the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts and everyday Americans wonder if we are finally at the end of what has been a painful and exhausting ordeal that’s lasted 3 years. With vaccine and booster fatigue, COVID-19 cases leveling out, and a growing body of research that has helped us understand the virus more clearly, many are still asking: How concerned should I be?

 In February, the Biden administration announced that it was the end of the road for the COVID-19 emergency orders, which had been in place since January 2020. That came after a year still fraught with ups and downs, with the U.S. surpassing 1 million COVID-19 deaths and variants continuing to evolve.

 We asked experts their thoughts on the future of COVID-19 and how their perspectives have shifted over the years.

Where Are We Now With COVID-19?

While the Omicron variant is still lingering, we’re in a period of lower rates of COVID-19 transmission.

Is This the End of the Pandemic? 

First, it’s important to understand the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic, Vasan says. An epidemic is the spreading of a disease that outpaces what would be expected within a certain time and location. A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads across various continents and regions of the world.

COVID-19 is a new virus, which makes things tricky. “Before 2020, our baseline was zero because COVID-19 didn’t exist,” says Vasan. “So, the question we can’t really answer from an epidemiologic standpoint is – ‘is it still a pandemic?’ Well, is it circulating beyond what’s to be expected? I think we’re going to have to figure out what those expectations are at baseline.”

Jim Versalovic, MD, pathologist-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital, deems this a “post-pandemic” period, since the virus isn’t impacting us as dramatically as it did in 2020 and 2021. This is thanks to the successful efforts “to diagnose, treat, and prevent COVID-19,” along with collective immunity after many being exposed and infected with the virus, he says.

“It has become one of our major respiratory viruses affecting mankind around the globe,” he says. “Certainly, in the medical profession, we’re going to have to do our best to communicate and emphasize to everyone that these viruses aren’t going to disappear, and we need to continue to be aware and vigilant.”

Don’t forget that people still die from this virus every day, says Tuznik. “COVID-19 has killed over 1 million Americans and over 6.8 million people globally,” she says. “While the rates of death have declined, they have not stopped.”

Vasan poses another critical question: “What pieces are in place to ensure that we have a strong health system prepared to respond to COVID-19 changes or if another epidemic or pandemic illness arrives?” 

Examples could include ensuring tests, vaccines, and treatments are deployed in a quick, strategic manner, and building a public health system that can make that happen, without failing to support health care workers, he says.

And while COVID-19 certainly brought to light the major – and minor – flaws in the health care system, the knowledge we’ve learned along the way is a silver lining for many doctors. Versalovic says that the chaos and anxiety forced those in medicine to rapidly refine their approaches to diagnostics, from in-hospital testing to drive-thru and at-home testing. Along the way, he says, there has also been a renewed gratitude for treatments like monoclonal antibodies and the preventive powers of RNA vaccines. 

But for Tuznik, the pandemic has given her an entirely newfound appreciation for her career path. 

“The infectious diseases community really came together as a tour de force during the pandemic, and it was humbling to be a part of such a mass effort and collaboration,” she says. 

What Have the Last 3 Years Taught You?

COVID-19 has forced us all to learn new and often difficult lessons about ourselves, our relationships, and how we each fit into the world. 

It’s a line we’ve heard over and over again: These are unprecedented times. A large part of that has been the extreme politicization of science and the growing divisiveness across the country. But despite what feels like unyielding friction in the medical community and beyond, people were still able to come together and tackle the pandemic’s challenges. 

Vasan says that our ability to work together on life-saving treatments and prevention strategies is “a testament to human endeavor, ingenuity, collaboration, in the face of an existential threat.”

For nurses, the pandemic brought about pervasive burnout and fatigue. But that’s not the end of the story. 

“Personally, it has driven me to go back to school to gain the research and analytical skills necessary to develop evidence-based policies and programs that aim to improve health care delivery,” says Gil. “Now, more than ever, nurses are key stakeholders at the policy and decision-making table.”

March 15, 2023 – Three years after COVID-19 rocked the world, the pandemic has evolved into a steady state of commonplace infections, less frequent hospitalization and death, and continued anxiety and isolation for older people and those with weakened immune systems.

After about 2½ years of requiring masks in health care settings,  the CDC lifted its recommendation for universal, mandatory masking in hospitals in September 2022.

Some statistics tell the story of how far we have come. COVID-19 weekly cases dropped to nearly 171,000 on March 8, a huge dip from the 5.6 million weekly cases reported in January 2022. COVID-19 deaths, which peaked in January 2021 at more than 23,000 a week, stood at 1,862 per week on March 8.

Where We Are Now

Since Omicron is so infectious, “we believe that most people have been infected with Omicron in the world,” says Christopher J.L. Murray, MD, a professor and chair of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle. Sero-prevalence surveys — or the percentage of people in a population who have antibodies for an infectious disease, or the Omicron variant in this case — support this rationale, he says.

“That is a testament to the amazing power of vaccines,” he says. 

The respiratory failures that marked many critical cases of COVID in 2020 and 2021 are much rarer now, a shift that Garibaldi calls “refreshing.”

“In the past 4 or 5 weeks, I’ve only seen a handful of COVID patients. In March and April of 2020, our entire intensive care unit – in fact, six intensive care units – were filled with COVID patients.”

Garibaldi sees his own risk differently now as well. 

“I am not now personally worried about getting COVID, getting seriously ill, and dying from it. But if I have an ICU shift coming up next week, I am worried about getting sick, potentially having to miss work, and put that burden on my colleagues. Everyone is really tired now,” says Garibaldi, who is also an associate professor of medicine and physiology in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

One caveat is that sometimes, it is unclear if COVID-19 is the main reason someone is admitted to the hospital vs. someone who comes in for another reason and happens to test positive upon admission. 

Phillips suggests that using more than one measure might be the best approach, especially to reduce the likelihood of bias associated with any single strategy. “You need to look at a whole variety of tests in order for us to get a good sense of how it’s affecting all communities,” he says. In addition, if a consensus emerges among different measures – wastewater surveillance, hospitalization and test positivity all trending up – “that’s clearly a sign that things are afoot and that we would need to modify our approach accordingly.”

Where We Could Be Heading

Murray predicts a steady pace of infection with “no big changes.” But waning immunity remains a concern. 

That means if you have not had a recent infection – in the last 6 to 10 months – you might want to think about getting a booster, Murray says “The most important thing for people, for themselves, for their families, is to really think about keeping their immunity up.” 

Murray addresses whether the term “pandemic” still applies at this point. 

“In my mind, the pandemic is over,” he says, because we are no longer in an emergency response phase. But COVID in some form is likely to be around for a long time, if not forever.  

“So, it depends on how you define pandemic. If you mean an emergency response, I think we’re out of it. If you mean the formal definition you know of an infection that goes all over the place, then we’re going to be in it for a very long time.”