Have we recovered from the pandemic yet?

A look back at how COVID-19 shook the world five years ago

- CLINICAL MATTERS DR. EDSEL MAURICE T. SALVANA

COVID-19 was a watershed moment for the world. Whole countries were shut down by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and millions of people died despite all the advances in modern medicine.

It was the first pandemic to play out in real time on mainstream and social media, and it was the first pandemic where genomics played a major role in detection, tracking, and evolution of the disease. It was also a period of unprecedented innovation, with an effective vaccine rolled out within one year of the identification of the pathogen. It also had the dubious distinction of having a parallel pandemic of disinformation, eventually dubbed an infodemic.

While the characterization of COVID-19 as a pandemic occurred on March 11, 2020, the initial declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) occurred on Jan. 30, 2020. Despite persistent rumors that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory, the preponderance of scientific evidence points to a zoonotic (animal-to-human transmission) origin that occurred sometime in December 2019.