The year 2022 began by crashing all hopes of the two-year COVID-19 pandemic coming to an end. A new variant of the coronavirus, Omicron, started another wave of COVID-19 globally.
As we enter 2023, there is hope of the pandemic turning endemic, thus marking the widest public health emergency’s end. Here is a chronology of the pandemic’s run this year through a selection of Down To Earth’s articles:
The COVID-19 pandemic looks set to become endemic as it enters its fourth year. In becoming endemic, it could increase the disease burden of the world.
Read more: COVID-19 will now be an endemic pandemic
That increase in the disease burden will primarily be because of long COVID-19.
China, where the novel coronavirus originated, tread a COVID-19 path different from the rest of the world. The ruling Chinese Communist Party adopted a policy of ‘zero-tolerance’, with entire cities, provinces and regions on lockdown at the same time. This made the population immuno-compromised. With the result that even the slightest relaxing of norms resulted in new strains of the coronavirus.
Through 2022, new variants and sub-variants of SARS-CoV-2 kept popping up.
Measures taken around the world to curb COVID-19 had another positive effect: They curbed the circulation of influenza.
Read more: COVID-19 has suppressed influenza for now, but it will return with greater severity: Study
Throughout 2022, debate raged on as to whether the pandmic had actually ended and ‘normalcy’ had returned.
Shahid Jameel, former head of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium, spoke to DTE about how a virus mutates, the trajectory of COVID-19 and concerns regarding re-infection.
A Thrissur resident studying medicine at Wuhan University, who became the first case of COVID-19 in India, recounted her story to DTE.
In January this year, migrant workers returning to Jharkhand for the Christmas and year-end holidays caused cases of the novel coronavirus disease to spike, leading to a third wave.
In January, it was predicted that nearly 60 per cent of the global population was expected to be infected by the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by March.