Covid-19: Where we are five years on

Healthcare frontliners escort a patient at Hospital Putrajaya’s Emergency and Trauma Department during the Covid-19 pandemic. — Filepic

Much water has flowed under the bridge since the World Health Organization (WHO) characterised Covid-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, after having declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on Jan 30, 2020, following the first case reported in China in December 2019.

When WHO declared on May 5, 2023, the end of Covid-19 as a PHEIC, the data on its coronavirus dashboard, which had collated key statistics since early in the pandemic, stood at more than 765 million cumulative cases and just under seven million deaths globally.