But speak to any scientist and they will tell you that it is far from over.
In fact, an outbreak of a different member of the coronavirus family of viruses is ‘inevitable’, owing to a confluence of environmental and lifestyle factors such as fast travel and large cities, says Ted Schenkelberg, co-founder of the Human Vaccines Project, an international research organisation based in New York.
‘We are living in a world that is ripe for pandemics,’ he warns.
But could the solution be a universal vaccine a single jab that would offer protection against Covid-19, all its variants and all members of the coronavirus family?