11 March marks five years since the World Health Organization declared the spread of Covid-19 a pandemic. The virus caused 7 million deaths, according to the UN body.
Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, unprecedented lockdowns were introduced around the world and the global economy suffered its worst crisis in more than a century. In 2023, the maximum alert level was lifted, but while the virus is now far less deadly, it has not disappeared.
Covid-19 monitoring is far less rigorous now, making it difficult to obtain figures that reflect the reality of the reach of the virus today. However, 11,000 cases of Covid-19 in a single week were recently reported to the WHO by around 50 countries, along with 500 deaths per week.
In France, where precise monitoring is now only carried out in winter, 5,600 deaths associated with the virus were recorded for the 2023-2024 season.
Covid-19 is still killing people, but in far smaller numbers. This is because a huge proportion of the world's population is now immune, protected from severe forms of the disease by vaccination and/or previous infections.
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The variant that has been circulating since the end of 2021, Omicron, and its sub-lineages, may also be less virulent than previous variants, according to some experts. But Covid-19 remains a dangerous illness for the elderly and those with weakened immune systems.
The vaccine gap
Reflecting this, vaccination is still strongly recommended for vulnerable people – those over 65, people with chronic illnesses and those with immunodeficiency. In France, these groups are still encouraged to take up a booster vaccine every year.
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Such campaigns, previously aimed at the entire population, changed the course of the pandemic. Highly effective vaccines were developed in record time, including those using innovative technology based on messenger RNA. According to one study by Imperial College London, 20 million lives were saved in 2021 thanks to vaccines.
But this figure would have been higher had access to vaccines in low-income countries not been delayed and limited. As such, the pandemic threw a harsh light on global health inequality.
The threat of misinformation
The pandemic also gave rise to a flood of fake news and scientific misinformation – a phenomenon that would represent a danger to public health in the event of another pandemic.
"For me, the most important thing is that a certain number of people were talking nonsense, for example saying that it was a flu, that there wouldn't be a second wave... These people are criminals. We still haven't completely solved the problem.
"Not enough people have been prosecuted for this. Because we have to realise that these people are responsible for some of the deaths from Covid-19," said Stéphane Gaudry, professor of intensive care medicine at Avicenne Hospital, north of Paris, and vice-dean of the faculty of medicine at Sorbonne Paris Nord University.
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He continued: "When we see on social networks that this is persisting and that it is likely to grow – because in the United States now, with the new American minister of health, untruths are considered to be truths – I think that's what's most worrying. We all know very well that quackery and conspiracy theories could get us into trouble if they come back."
This article was adapted from the original version in French.
