When Will The Novel Coronavirus global Pandemic Be Over?

When Will The Novel Coronavirus Pandemic Be Over?

        Past pandemics have typically lasted 12 to 36 months.

The new coronavirus has spread significantly worldwide since it first emerged in China in December 2019, making it a global pandemic, per the World Health Organization (WHO). There are nearly 3 million confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 around the globe, according to a WHO report on April 28.

As countries and cities continue to enforce social distancing, encourage self-isolation policies, and postpone major events (including the Olympics!), one question is likely on your mind a lot: When will this pandemic actually end?

The short answer is, no one can say for certain. But infectious disease specialists and researchers have some thoughts to help put this global health situation into perspective.

How long will people be dealing with the novel coronavirus in the U.S. and around the world?

Honestly, it’s impossible to say if and when the coronavirus will die down because it’s a totally new virus, and therefore unpredictable, says Faheem Younus, MD, the chief of infectious diseases at University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health. But pandemics have happened before, and they eventually pass as they become more contained, and as vaccines are developed and distributed. But researchers do look at past pandemics to make very baseline predictions about when it might end. And in the past, pandemics have typically lasted between 12 and 36 months.

Here's one example of the timeline of a past pandemic: In 2009, a novel H1N1 flu pandemic occurred. (Remember swine flu?) The WHO declared a pandemic that June, and by mid-September, the FDA approved four vaccines for the virus, and they started getting administered in October. In late December, vaccination was opened up to anyone who wanted it, and the pandemic was deemed over in August 2010, according to a    timeline from the CDC.

      In the past, pandemics           have typically lasted         between 12 and 36 months.

The bummer is, though, you can't simply model a new pandemic against a past one and accurately determine how bad or long *this* pandemic will be—because they are not the same viruses, and viruses behave and spread differently, says Rishi Desai, MD, a former epidemic intelligence service officer in the division of viral diseases at the CDC. But as more info becomes available about COVID-19, better predictions will be made. “My expectation is that COVID-19 will continue to be a threat for a good part of 2020, and that we will start to see the page turn in 2021,” Dr. Desai says. “At that point, we may have a vaccine, and we will have much more experience with this disease.”

Some good news: Right now, researchers are working on multiple vaccines in both animal and human trials. Researchers typically need one tone-and-a-half to two years to develop a new vaccine.