UMMC doctor touts remarkable progress in pandemic fight but 'COVID is still with us'

BALTIMORE - Three years ago, the world shut down because of this then-unknown virus.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Schools closed, sports were halted and people were confined to their homes.

Looking back, the medical field was full of uncertainty. Thousands of first responders were in the front lines battling the pandemic.

WJZ spoke with a health expert at the University of Maryland Medical Center who explained the remarkable progress that has been made.

"I can think of person after person and face after face of people who you would never expect to see in a response like this, who just wanted to be involved, wanted to do something," said Dr. Chuck Callahan, Vice President for Population Health at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

We witnessed global shutdowns, hospitals at full capacity, masking, social distancing and other tight restrictions.

Dr. Callahan credited Johns Hopkins University for pioneering the COVID-19 dashboard, a key resource in the fight against the virus.

"Hopkins was uniquely in a position to develop a data set that was award-winning, that was really all we had in the first weeks and months," Dr. Callahan said.

Data shows more than 6.8 million people have died worldwide of COVID-19, with more than 1.1 million of those deaths recorded in the United States.

Maryland hospitals constantly evolved to play a pivotal role in treating patients.

"We picked up mass testing, antibody infusions, in addition to transitioning to other forms of treatment like Paxlovid and IV remdesivir and we picked up vaccinations when time came," Dr. Callahan said.

Dr Callahan said health experts have learned a lot but we are still not out of the woods.

"I think that we will learn some things," Dr. Callahan said. "COVID is still with us. We still have COVID vaccinations potentially ahead of us, but I think that we will learn lessons from this so we can be a more heavily-committed public health nation."

The World Health Organization has not yet declared the emergency over.

The Biden Administration announced declarations will end on May 11.