Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in Baltimore, sees the pandemic continuing into 2023 for parts of the developing world.
“For me, the transition from pandemic to endemic is when you’re not worried about hospitals getting crushed,” he said. “That will happen in most Western countries in 2022, and it will take a little bit longer for the rest of the world.”
In parts of Asia, public health officials aren’t even willing to consider calling the end of the pandemic.
While most of the world now seeks to live alongside Covid, China and Hong Kong are still trying to eliminate it. After spending much of 2021 virtually virus-free, both places are currently dealing with outbreaks.
“We do not possess the prerequisites for living with the virus because the vaccination rate is not good, especially amongst the elderly,” said Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam. “I could not stand seeing a lot of old people dying in my hospitals.”
Harsh virus restrictions including border closures and quarantines may well be in place until the end of 2022, though the higher contagiousness of the new variants is making that harder to maintain, as Hong Kong’s current challenges show. Walling out the virus completely, like a swathe of countries did early in the pandemic, may no longer be possible.
With so much of the world still mired in the pandemic, virus-related dislocations will continue everywhere.
The immense strain on global supply chains is only worsened by workers sickened or forced to quarantine as a result of omicron. The problem is especially acute in Asia, where much of the world's manufacturing takes place, and means global concerns about soaring consumer prices are unlikely to disappear any time soon. China’s increasingly vehement moves to keep quashing Covid are also becoming disruptive.
With many countries only partially open to visitors, international travel is still very far from what we considered normal in 2019. Hospitals and health care systems around the world face a long, slow recovery after two years of monumental pressure.
And for some individuals, the virus may be a life sentence. Long Covid sufferers have now been experiencing severe fatigue, muscle aches and even brain, heart and organ damage for months.