Skip to content 
## What About the Origins of COVID-19?
Five years later, one major question remains unresolved:
**How exactly did SARS-CoV-2 enter the human population?**
This subject has generated intense scientific and political debate.
In June 2025, WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens published an extensive assessment of the available evidence.
The group concluded that the weight of available evidence favored a zoonotic spillover, meaning transmission from animals to humans, either directly from bats or through an intermediate host.
However, WHO also emphasized that important information remains unavailable and that all hypotheses could not be definitively excluded. Organisation mondiale de la santé
That distinction is crucial.
Science sometimes produces a strongest-supported explanation without providing absolute certainty.
The origins investigation therefore remains unfinished.
WHO has continued calling for additional information, including relevant genetic sequences, details about animals connected with early cases and information concerning laboratory activities and biosafety in Wuhan. Organisation mondiale de la santé
Understanding the origins matters because it could help scientists identify and prevent future outbreaks.
## The Human Cost Was Larger Than the Official Death Count
COVID-19’s impact cannot be measured only by confirmed infections and reported deaths.
The pandemic disrupted health systems, education, employment, economies and mental health.
It also caused deaths indirectly when healthcare systems were overwhelmed or people were unable to access normal medical services.
This is why researchers use **excess mortality** as another way to understand the pandemic.
WHO defines excess mortality as the difference between observed deaths and the number that would normally have been expected, incorporating both direct and indirect effects of the crisis. Organisation mondiale de la santé
In 2026, WHO reported an estimated **22.1 million excess deaths associated with the pandemic between 2020 and 2023**, including indirect deaths—more than three times the number of officially reported COVID-19 deaths. Organisation mondiale de la santé
These estimates demonstrate how much larger the pandemic’s consequences were than the official case and death statistics alone could show.
## The Pandemic Exposed Inequality
COVID-19 did not affect every community equally.
Access to healthcare, vaccines, testing, reliable information and economic support varied enormously between countries and within countries.
Some people were able to work from home.
Others worked in jobs where staying home was impossible.
Some communities had sophisticated healthcare infrastructure.
Others faced shortages of medical equipment, oxygen, healthcare workers or vaccines.
The pandemic therefore exposed weaknesses that existed long before 2020.
It also showed that infectious diseases do not respect national borders.
A virus emerging in one part of the world can become a global crisis remarkably quickly.
That is why pandemic preparedness is now a central part of international health policy.
## What Did We Learn About Preparedness?
Perhaps the biggest lesson is that preparation cannot begin when the next outbreak starts.
It must happen beforehand.
WHO has acknowledged that the world is better prepared in some ways than it was before COVID-19, but has also emphasized that significant gaps remain. In 2025, WHO described the answer to whether the world is ready for another pandemic as essentially **“yes and no.”** Organisation mondiale de la santé
The world now has experience developing vaccines at unprecedented speed, coordinating genomic surveillance and adapting clinical guidance during a rapidly evolving crisis.
But experience alone does not guarantee preparedness.
Countries still need strong health systems, reliable disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, trained healthcare workers, emergency supplies and mechanisms for sharing information quickly.
The lessons have to become permanent capabilities.
## Trust Became a Public-Health Issue
Another major lesson concerns communication.
During COVID-19, misinformation and conspiracy theories spread alongside the virus.
Conflicting messages, changing scientific guidance and political disagreements sometimes made it difficult for ordinary people to determine which information they could trust.
Science itself is designed to change when new evidence emerges.
But communicating that uncertainty effectively is difficult.
One of the most important lessons from the pandemic is therefore that public-health authorities need to explain not only **what they know**, but also **what they don’t know**.
Transparency can be uncomfortable.
But pretending to have certainty when evidence is incomplete can ultimately damage trust.
## Five Years Later, What Should We Remember?