The COVID emergency might end after 3 long years — but the virus is still a threat – CBC
WHO committee meets Friday to discuss whether the pandemic still represents a global emergency
Jan 26, 2023
Dr. Allison McGeer spent the first few days of 2020 hoping she was wrong.
A microbiologist in Toronto, who famously survived a SARS infection in 2003, McGeer knew the strange, unexplained pneumonia spreading in China could explode into something much, much worse.
She said as much during a provincial meeting during the last week of January that year. “This is going to be awful,” she recalled telling officials. “And in particular, long-term care is going to be catastrophic.”
Soon after, her son asked how long the crisis would last. McGeer’s grim prediction: 18 months.
“And even that was a pretty substantial underestimate,” she told CBC News recently.
It’s now been more than three years since SARS-CoV-2 began its march around the world, first as a virus totally foreign to humans, and later as an evolving pathogen capable of sneaking past our sharpened immune systems, infecting even those who’ve built up immunity from prior infections or vaccinations.
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-emergency-who-1.6725543
