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Covid-19 in 2022: into the known unknowns of ending the pandemic
- The path back to global stability is through vaccinations and limiting spread of the virus but it all depends on how well immunity and societies hold up
- New variants will mean a fresh look at old assumptions about the disease transmission
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This is the first of a three-part series to mark the second anniversary of Covid-19. Here, Simone McCarthy looks at whether 2022 will be the year the coronavirus pandemic finally ends.
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If one top World Health Organization official is correct, 2022 could be the year the Covid-19 pandemic ends.
As it enters its third year of the coronavirus, the world has the technology it needs to make it happen, according to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s leading Covid-19 expert. Vaccines have been developed, many people have already been inoculated, and much more is known about the treatment of the disease.
“We have the tools now that can take the severe spectrum of disease out … We can take the death out of Covid-19 and we can also reduce the spread,” Van Kerkhove wrote in the journal Nature Medicine this month.
Experts largely agree that limiting transmission while boosting global immunity through widespread vaccination – before any more dangerous variants emerge – is the path back to global stability.
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But it all rests on two known unknowns: how the virus evolves and provokes our immune system, and how societies respond.
“Controlling this virus was always in our control, it remains in our control,” Van Kerkhove said.
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