COVID-19 two years on: What have we learned and what is the future?

Since emerging in Wuhan in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 spread worldwide. The Cook Islands in the South Pacific, one of the last outposts free from COVID-19, recorded its first case on 13 February 2022.¹

Every Independent Nurse reader probably knows friends and relations who have developed COVID-19. But the psychological, emotional and financial impact touched even the uninfected, triggering in some people, mental health problems, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.^2,3 If previous pandemics and epidemics are anything to go by, for some this distress will herald chronic longer-term mental health problems.² So, two years on from the first UK lockdown, what have we learnt?