By Roberto Morejón

The end of the COVID-19 health emergency in the world represented good news in 2023, a year in which crises and wars as well as calamities linked to climate change were recorded or deepened.
 
The WHO, the World Health Organization, put an end to the global health emergency caused by the new coronavirus in May, three years after declaring it, and after at least 6.9 million people had died.
 
With a decisive impact on the current international economic crisis characterized by inflation, the virus turned the planet upside down, altered lifestyles and forced many countries to collaborate.
 
Perhaps this assistance took longer than was prudent. The first large-scale vaccinations began on December 8, 2020, less than a year after the first case of the disease was reported to WHO.
 
According to WHO, the pandemic left earthlings with new tools and ambitions and helped them understand the need to prepare for future events of that origin.  
 
Given the way in which life changed, experts pointed out that although the emergency stage is behind us, COVID-19 did not disappear, although the consequences of the high levels of vaccination and the immunity brought by the infection itself are undoubted.

In other words, experts in the field indicate that the virus is no longer as dangerous and has reached a level of equilibrium or coexistence with the human host.
 
The world owes gratitude to science, but it should also pay attention to the considerations of its exponents, because, as they indicate, the serious social concern created by the disease cannot be ignored.
 
The accentuated inequalities were more outstanding than usual, since the poorest populations were the most affected and the last to receive vaccines and medical procedures.
 
As is well known, the population of industrialized countries received the second and third doses of vaccines while only five percent of African communities suffered the same fate.
 
One of the lessons to be learned from such a difficult health stage should be to draw the pertinent lessons from the offensive that the world had to join in order to preserve life.   
 
It is unwise to forget that the virus proved to be an unpredictable contender, mutating rapidly and significantly until it resurfaced and devastated human settlements.