COVID-19: The Next Steps for the World

Abstract

Since December 2019, COVID-19 is impacting the health, economy, education, and well-being of every country in the world. The total number of reported COVID-19 cases will soon surpass 100 million and the death toll will be more than 20 million. At this moment, the top 10 countries with the most reported number of cases currently are the USA, India, Brazil. Russia, UK, France, Turkey, Italy, Spain, and Germany. These countries altogether represent 31.7% of the world’s population. However, they reported 65.5% of the total COVID-19 cases and 58.9% of total deaths. For containing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Malaysia was one of the most successful countries in the world. However, since September 2020, the situation in Malaysia started changing, and at this moment Malaysia is reporting more than 2,500 new cases per day. During the past year, all the countries in the world acted fast and took different initiatives to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2, find effective drugs that can improve the clinical outcomes of COVID-19, and invent vaccines that can give immune protection. The first vaccine that was approved was invented by Pfizer/BioNTech and in December 2020, within one year of the beginning of the pandemic, the UK was the first country to start mass vaccination. As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2021, more than 50 COVID-19 vaccines were in different phases of clinical trial and five vaccines received certain national regulatory approval for mass vaccination. However, given all these developments the COVID-19 pandemic is still making a devastating impact on the whole world and the pandemic is not going to over soon. Therefore, we need to discuss what we can do now to deal with the pandemic and ensure the health and wellbeing of the citizens of the world.