Lessons learned three years after the pandemic

Three years later, covid19 is no longer classified as a public or community risk disease, but it is still a pandemic. On the third anniversary of the pandemic, Johns Hopkins University announced that it would stop keeping its global reports on the spread of the epidemic on the number of deaths and confirmed cases. When they stopped counting, the number of confirmed deaths was 6,881,955 people.

According to Ali Mirazimi, professor of clinical virology at Karolinska Institutet, there are three particularly important lessons from the pandemic.

Basic research is very important because it gives us medicines and vaccines. The second is that it is very important to have laboratory skills and diagnostic tools, and the third is to expand the health care system to be able to care for patients affected by the effects of the epidemic, he said.

There is no conclusion

According to Ali Mirazimi, there is no conclusion as to which country has dealt better with the spread of infection, but he believes it was important above all to keep schools open as it affects society in the long run.

Are we better equipped now than we were in 2020?

– It’s hard to say we’re better equipped because with a major crisis you always learn certain things and take action to improve. Mirasimi says the next crisis could look very different.

What were the biggest research developments in these three years?

– What has really taken off are new vaccine technologies, namely mRNA vaccines. It’s something we’ve been looking at for 20 years, says Ali Mirazimi, but now they have to show how important it is.