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The pandemic COVID-19 is certainly one of the most severe infectious diseases in human history. In the last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 418.6 million confirmed cases and 5.8 million deaths worldwide. Young people make up the majority of all infected COVID-19 cases, but the mortality rate is relatively lower compared to older age groups. Currently, about 55.04% individuals have been fully vaccinated rapidly approaching to herd immunity globally. The challenge is that new SARS-CoV-2 variants with potential to evade immunity from natural infection or vaccine continue to emerge. Breakthrough infections have occurred in both SARS-CoV-2 naturally infected and vaccinated individuals, but breakthrough infections tended to exhibit mild or asymptomatic symptoms and lower mortality rates. Therefore, immunity from natural infection or vaccination can reduce SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity, but neither can completely prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection/reinfection. Fortunately, the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 continue to decline. The 7-day average cumulative case fatality of COVID-19 has decreased from 12.3% on the February 25, 2020, to 0.27% on January 09, 2022, which could be related to a decreased SARS-CoV-2 variant virulence, vaccine immunization, and/or better treatment of patients. In conclusion, elimination of SARS-CoV-2 in the world could be impossible or at least an arduous task with a long way to go. The best strategy to prevent COVID-19 pandemic is to expand inoculation rate of effective vaccines. As the population reaches herd immunity, the mortality rate of COVID-19 may continue to decrease, and COVID-19 could eventually become another common cold.

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Publication history

Received: 07 June 2021
Revised: 23 August 2021
Accepted: 25 August 2021
Published: 04 March 2022
Issue date: March 2022

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Tsinghua University Press.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Funds of China (81971939 and 31570167) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2042021kf0046). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.

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This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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