3 Years After the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Here’s How San Diego County Has Changed – NBC San Diego

Three years after the World Health Organization declared a pathogen dubbed coronavirus a pandemic and sent people around the globe into lockdown, an end to the global health emergency is in sight.

Both California and San Diego County officials have declared an end to their COVID-19 health emergencies and the WHO says they’re hopeful the world will transition out of the emergency phase of the pandemic this year.

But during those three years, San Diegans have had to change the way they live; their children had to adapt their learning; workplaces had to adjust the way they do business; and people had to address changes with their mental health.

There have been nearly 100,000 reported cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic on March 11, 2020 — likely far more unreported cases — and more than 5,785 deaths linked to the disease.

And, while the world tries to return to life as it was before March 11, 2020, there are some things that won’t ever return to what we thought was “normal.”

On the three-year anniversary of the start of the coronavirus pandemic, NBC 7 takes a look at what has changed since the deadly virus began spreading across the world.

Education

The peak of COVID-19 may seem to be behind us, but schools are still feeling its effects, especially when it comes to student learning, reports NBC 7’s Jeanette Quezada.

The losses incurred during the pandemic were also reflected in nationwide test scores. Last year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released the first batch of scores since the pandemic, revealing that, across the country, nearly 4 in 10 eighth-graders failed to grasp basic math concepts and reading scores dropped to 1992 levels.

The Most Affected Communities

The pandemic actually exaggerated how vulnerable San Diego’s communities are, said Ming-Hsiang Tsou.

Early on in the pandemic, we saw COVID-19 impacting certain communities in San Diego County harder than others. One stood out in particular: the South Bay.

A team of graduate students and faculty with the Human Dynamics Research Center at San Diego State University spent a year studying real-time data from the county and developed maps that painted a revealing picture of the interconnectivity between health indexes and attitudes toward vaccinations, masking and other safety precautions.

The Future of COVID

The CDC said the new COVID-19 variant is responsible for 75% of new cases.