COVID: Two Years of the Pandemic

The light at the end of the tunnel is bright, but we are officially two years into the COVID-19 pandemic today.

The World Health Organization declared the pandemic on March 11th, 2020. At the time, there had been only about 1300 confirmed cases in the U.S. and 38 deaths from the virus. Since then:

• Reported cases in the U.S. are nearing 80 million.
   
• Reported COVID deaths are at about 963,000.
   
• 77% of eligible Americans have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, with 65% fully vaccinated.
   
• 13 variants received Greek-letter names. Of those, five became “variants of concern”: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omicron.

After the enormous omicron spike during and after the holidays, case numbers in the U.S. have fallen to a level last seen in July 2021. And though daily death totals remain somewhat high, they are about half of what they were during the omicron peak.