At best, Australia may be through the pandemic in 2024, says Professor James Wood, an infectious disease modeller who has closely analysed the data since the first days of the pandemic.

This doesn’t mean COVID-19 will vanish. It means it would have settled into a predictable annual event. Just as the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 eventually settled into a weaker winter disease, so COVID-19 is “a fair way along the path to a seasonal pattern”, Wood says.