From that moment, governments all around the world started implementing restriction rules, travel bans and lockdowns aiming to curb the surge of the new, deadly disease. These measures keep having a profound effect over economies and people’s lives.
A year after, COVID-19 has infected more than 118 million people and caused over 2.6 million victims around the world. Transmission of the virus is still widespread, especially in Europe, Africa and Middle East. Furthermore, the continuous spreading of reportedly more contagious COVID-19 mutations keep pressuring global healthcare systems, thus prolonging the countries’ restrictive measures.
By the end of 2020, new coronavirus vaccines were developed and a global vaccination campaign started. To date, more than 300 million doses were administered worldwide, with the US, UK, Israel and Chile leading the immunization effort. New vaccines are being developed such as the single-shot vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, recently being approved for emergency use by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) under the COVAX program.
Moreover, large economic relief measures –to contrast the negative effect of the COVID-19 restrictions– were recently approved such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in the EU and the newly ratified $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in the US.