Two years ago today, as New Year's Eve fireworks lit up skies across the world, news reached the World Health Organization about an outbreak of "pneumonia" in Wuhan, China, the cause of which was unknown.
There were several cases in December and November in the region. The world at large was made aware of its existence by the WHO announcement.
After the announcement, fears of potential diseases usually just flared then faded, as the fireworks that preceded the announcement had done. The disease that came to be known as Covid-19 was completely different.
More than 5 million people have lost their lives to the virus in two years, and governments and their citizens are still waiting for a new normal to emerge.
The virus has exposed inequalities within countries in terms of the impact on lower-paid, public-facing employees, as well as the effect of vaccine roll outs at vastly different rates.
The impact of Covid worldwide is shown in graphics.
Europe and the Americas have had the most cases.
According to figures from Our World in Data, more than one in 10 people in Europe and America have tested positive for Covid. The case figures do not capture cases that have gone under the radar.
The number of Covid-19 tests carried out in a country is used in recorded cases. We can get a sense of the spread of the Pandemic by looking at case rates on the continents.
The Omicron variant has caused a surge in cases in Europe in December, meaning that Europe is currently counted for 60 percent of all new cases being recorded worldwide.
This wasn't always the case. South America's case rates went up for several months starting in April 2021. The high case rates in Brazil have had an effect on the number of people on the continent.
At the end of 2020, North America had the highest case rates. The country recently reported it had over one million deaths.
The Omicron variant, which was first reported in South Africa, has been a hard hit by the Pandemic. Case rates are influenced by how much testing a country does and how much funding it has available to fight Covid-19.
Many countries had cause for optimism because of the vaccine roll out.
The world was pinning its hopes on the vaccine roll out. Of the 4.5 billion people who had received coronaviruses vaccine doses, close to 3.8 billion were fully protected. It proved that vaccines reduce the risk of Covid-19 infections.
Israel was the first country to achieve strong vaccine coverage after signing a deal with Pfizer. The US and the UK had early success in their roll outs, unlike the EU which took longer to pass regulations.
Many countries have since outpaced the early leaders, including Portugal, Chile, Cuba, Spain, China, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
The latest figures from Our World in Data show that at least two-thirds of the population in many countries have beenvaccinated.
