Dhananjay Kumar Singh lives in India and shares what his life has been like there, and he also wonders what we all do: what is the future of COVID, and when will we turn the corner?  

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has changed and transformed nearly every aspect of life: from day-to-day behavior to work practices to social interactions to the economy, etc., there has been much disruption from what was before.

What lies ahead? That’s what everyone wants to know. Here, there is doubt about how long COVID-19 will last; doubt about when we will all be able to freely breathe unmasked in the open air. Will it be possible to live like the past, before COVID?

In the words of World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “While no country is out of the woods from the pandemic, we have new tools to prevent and treat COVID-19. The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic.”

“The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic.”

The data on vaccinations show that low-income countries have poor vaccination rates compared to middle-income and high-income countries. This inequality may prove to be a blessing for any new variants to emerge.

Wealthy nations are helping the poor ones to bring back their economies and fully restart. Even the WHO strategy is to achieve global vaccination by mid-2022.

Omicron, the new variant, is it a threat to human life? According to the experts’ assessment, the new variant has a very high rate of infectivity, more than five times the Delta variant. The good news is Omicron grows slower in the lungs than Delta.

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These views could, we believe, explain that no more variants will emerge in the future, or if (or when) they do emerge they will not be life-threatening. In this regard, experts envision a transition from pandemic to endemic. Some even say that the endemicity remains the endpoint of COVID-19. This means that COVID will remain around, much like the common flu, and we will have to get used to living with it.

Is the worst yet to come? Are there more waves? Who knows what COVID holds in store? The fact is it’s difficult to accurately predict the future trajectory of COVID-19. It may be or may not be the beginning of the end.

In the words of Professor Matthew Baylis from the University of Liverpool, “And this is not the last pandemic we are going to face, so we need to be looking more closely at wildlife disease.”

(artwork by Rajkumar Hansdah)