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Will 2023 see the end of COVID-19 pandemic?
It is still too early to celebrate the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, no matter how much we might wish for it, and we must remain vigilant throughout the coming year and stay on the alert against new threats in the years to come.
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Bali's Besakih Temple holds a public ceremony without COVID-19 restrictions in April 2022. (Courtesy of Velina Sita Devani) (Courtesy of Velina Sita Devani)
A
s 2022 comes to a close, we are still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. People ask about, discuss and hope that the pandemic will finally end in 2023.
To answer the most frequently asked questions, we need a comprehensive analysis and reality check.
First of all, we should remember that the pandemic before COVID-19 that the World Health Organization declared was the H1N1 pandemic. On June 11, 2009, then-WHO director-general Margaret Chan announced the beginning of the swine flu pandemic, raising its alert level to phase 6, the highest level.
On Aug. 10, 2010, Chan announced that the H1N1 influenza pandemic was no longer at alert phase 6, and that the world had moved into the post-pandemic period. So, the pandemic before COVID-19 lasted only one year and two months.
Incumbent WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus declared the COVID-19 global pandemic on March 11, 2020. At that time, COVID-19 cases had reached 118,000 globally, with 4,291 deaths. As time passed, both the infection and fatality rates increased exponentially.
As of Dec. 16, almost three years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, has infected nearly 648 million people and killed more than 6.64 million people globally.
In Indonesia, the first cases were announced on March 2, 2020. As of Dec. 16, 2022, the country has recorded over 6.7 million cases and 160,335 deaths.
