On May 8, Japan’s government reclassified Covid-19 as a “Class 5” disease according to the Infectious Diseases Control Law, putting it on the same level as the seasonal flu. This comes three years and four months after the first infections were confirmed in Japan, signaling a transition from a state of emergency to a non-emergency in terms of the response to Covid-19. What have we learned from this pandemic that has lasted over three years? What kinds of changes will this transition bring, and what issues will we continue to face? We asked Professor MORI Yasuko of the Division of Clinical Virology at Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine’s Center for Infectious Diseases.
With the World Health Organization (WHO) ending its declaration of a state of emergency on May 5, it would appear that we have turned a corner in this pandemic. As an expert in the field of infectious diseases, what do you feel we have learned from these three years of Covid-19 pandemic response?
Professor Mori:
We were forced to face the fact that being caught off guard by an infectious disease capable of causing a global pandemic, especially a virus capable of airborne infection, could lead to a global pandemic on a scale that humanity has never seen before. As a specialist on infectious diseases, I thought I knew this on some level, but this pandemic has raised my awareness to new heights. Most researchers were not able to predict the degree to which this virus would spread across the globe, causing high numbers of deaths and serious illness when the first cases were reported in China in December of 2019.
At the same time, it’s also amazing that a viable vaccine was produced in such a relatively short time. Typically, the safety of vaccines is paramount, and the approval process takes years. In contrast, the Covid-19 vaccines were developed quickly while people’s lives were hanging in the balance, making them something of a “field vaccine.” The vaccines were able to be developed so quickly in the U.S. thanks to the messenger RNA research that had already been done by the time vaccine development began, and the fact that researchers there got to work early using that research. These are some of the lessons that we saw other countries doing and that Japan would do well to incorporate into our preparedness for the next potential pandemic.