Five years to the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, local leaders in COVID-19-related health care say the virus has forever changed Maryland, the U.S. and the world — in some ways, they said, for the better.
The WHO declared the pandemic on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, when case numbers and the number of countries where the virus was appearing had spiked alarmingly in just two weeks. The next day, Gov. Larry Hogan announced that Maryland would close schools for two weeks, a period that stretched into 18 months of virtual learning for most. Soon, workplaces shut down, grocery stores limited their hours, and hand sanitizer and face masks became staples in many homes as researchers raced to develop a vaccine.
Ultimately, the pandemic killed 1.2 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. Both the WHO and the U.S. ended their COVID-19 emergency declarations in 2023, with many doctors shifting to treating COVID like the flu: a virus for which outbreaks will continue to ebb and flow…