When will the COVID-19 pandemic end?

2020 was certainly not a great year, even at its first’s months, with the fires of Australia and the tensions between US and Iran with the assassination of Iranian major general Soleimani. So, among all these disasters, the media started reporting about a certain virus called Covid-19 spreading in the far east. Nobody really took it seriously, and no one thought that that far away virus would put our entire world upside down.

So, after more than half a year living in this seemingly unending post-virus world, one of the main questions in our mind is: When will the COVID-19 pandemic end?

Actually, the answer is not straightforward, it depends on our definition of “end”. If we define the end as by an epidemiological point, then, COVID-19 would end when the proportion of society immune is sufficient to prevent widespread transmission. If we define the end as the transition to a form of normalcy, then, it would occur when almost all aspects of social and economic life can resume without fear of ongoing mortality, when a mortality rate is no longer higher than a country’s historical average.

The two ends are related, but they would happen at different times. The epidemiological end point would occur later, possibly by the third or fourth quarter of 2021, whereas the transition to normalcy is predicted to come in the first or second quarter of 2021.

For the epidemiological end point, most countries are putting their hopes on the arrival of a vaccine, which could enable the creation of herd immunity, but the timing would depend and vary by country and will be affected by a number of factors like the arrival, efficacy, and adoption of vaccines, or the level of natural immunity in a population.

For the transition to normal, happens when the COVID-19 is still not eradicated, but the society is adapted to it, it would happen gradually, thanks to vaccination of the highest-risk populations, rapid testing, etc. This normalcy would not be the same as the old, but it would allow many familiar scenes, such as bustling shops, full restaurants, to resume.

In conclusion, this pandemic may seem to have no end, but there is still hope for it to end gradually in the near future of 2021.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid-19-pandemic-end