Last month was officially the second anniversary of “the longest spring break ever,” also known as the mass quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were forced to stay home and do virtual learning for the rest of the year, and many workers also had to work from home. Even with all of that happening just two years ago, a lot of things have changed since that fateful month. 

In other places around the world, the COVID pandemic seems to be in different stages. Shanghai, China is currently experiencing a lockdown which began in March 2022. This has been the first lockdown in China since the 76 day one in Wuhan. Residents are required to stay home, and the government is doing as much as it can to have little to no contact between citizens. Parts of China are unfortunately experiencing many shortages because of panic buying and this lack of contact.

Africa, for the most part, seems to be having little troubles since the initial COVID outbreak. Even though southern Africa has had troubles with the variants and subvarients of the virus, the rest of the continent has not had many hardships with it. One region in western Africa with 8 million residents reported to only have 11 COVID-19 cases and no deaths. It is believed that it is because about two thirds of the population have the antibodies from SARS-CoV-2. Most of Africa is experiencing life with little to no COVID concerns.

In the United States, there has been an overall decline within the nation with COVID outbreaks. Though some states do still have an increasing amount of cases, the majority of states have been stagnant or decreasing in their amount of cases. According to a map of COVID cases made by Kavya Beheraj, the majority of the increasing COVID cases are from eastern states. This increasing number of cases was caused mostly by an Omicron subvariant that began showing up in the US. Even so, there has been about a 6 percent drop in COVID cases within those two weeks of recorded data than the weeks prior. 

With the pandemic going down in the US, what does it mean for students and staff? Many protocols from the pandemic have been removed in the past few months.

“We’ve dropped almost all COVID protocols at this point in time,” said Principal Jeff Walker. “We haven’t really been seeing any COVID related illness or seeing very few numbers.”

Not only this but many districts have been experiencing little to no COVID cases in the past few months. For about a month St. Charles High School had only had one COVID case.

“It went from several cases, I think it went from about 6-8 cases a day, and I think we’ve only had one in the past month,” said Assistant Principal Ted Happel.

A lot of students also seem to be okay with easing back into normalcy. With school being forced virtual at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, many believe that their school experience was heavily affected by COVID.

“I had to do virtual for a year,” said junior Zevyn Hetzler, “I didn’t do great whenever it was a thing.”