In August 2010, more than a year to when it started, (WHO). For their decision, the WHO panel charged with advising on ending the pandemic declaration looked at several factors, including the worldwide activity of H1N1 influenza, the composition of the circulating strains of influenza, and the level of immunity in the public. Because influenza had returned to a seasonal pattern of activity, and H1N1 had become a mix of other type A and some type B viruses. Because most of the world had also either gotten sick with the H1N1 strain or received a vaccine against it, the panel advised the pandemic should be declared over.
This declaration meant that teams of professionals within WHO and its affiliated organizations would move to post-pandemic recovery efforts, and that resources leftover would be used toward other public health needs. Of course, by the time of this declaration, individual governments around the world had ended their pandemic response, especially those with the resources to quickly immunize their populations or care for those who became critically ill from the virus. While the , there is agreement among experts that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was not as deadly as the current COVID-19 pandemic, with the H1N1 influenza virus quickly becoming a seasonal strain of influenza that is still with us today.
Yet, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic is different in a few ways from the COVID-19 pandemic for several reasons. First, a novel coronavirus causes the COVID-19 pandemic. The human population previously did not encounter this strain of the virus at such a large scale. Although there are -- -- the novel coronavirus (NCoV-2) causing the COVID-19 pandemic was different enough to spread quickly and without opposition from any immunity to the previous strains. This likely contributed to why COVID-19 eclipsed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic () in terms or case fatality rates. (As with H1N1 influenza back in 2009-2010, case fatality rates with COVID-19 have fluctuated by geography and within countries by demographics.)
So when will the World Health Organization declare the COVID-19 pandemic over? This will probably happen in the first half of 2023, if not by late (Northern hemisphere) summer. Like with H1N1, most countries who can manage the pandemic with pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions have done so. Three years of experience have built up, and the public now generally knows what COVID-19 is, how it can be transmitted, how it can be prevented, and the risk incurred if individuals catch it. People are now better informed about the risks they take when going to crowded places, on long trips in public transportation, or in the work they do daily.
Sadly, there are hundreds of millions if not billions of people who live in places where public health and healthcare infrastructure is . For them, the continued declaration of the pandemic allows their governments to receive international aid at little to no cost, or to borrow monetary resources for their response at little to no interest. Ideally, WHO would have the ability to phase-out the pandemic declaration, beginning with a declaration that the novel coronavirus is now endemic in those places that can care for their residents and deal with the sporadic outbreaks that are sure to continue. For other places, the pandemic declaration would be left in place until they can deal with the daily impacts of NCoV-2 endemicity.
But this is the World Health Organization, so any declarations from it will have broad impacts, instead of the more desirable locally-tailored effects. Moreover, , from countries with strong public health and healthcare infrastructures and an eagerness to return to normal... Even if that normal is a “new normal.”
So that is my prediction based on existing evidence and historical precedent: the COVID-19 will be declared over by mid-2023. Hopefully, countries still seeing excess cases and deaths from COVID-19 will be given continued aid, and the global public health surveillance and response efforts are reinforced to prevent something worse from happening when a new pathogen decides to find new hosts in human populations.
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