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Good articleCOVID-19 pandemic has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
In the newsOn this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 28, 2020Featured article candidateNot promoted
September 10, 2020Good article nomineeNot listed
January 2, 2022Good article nomineeNot listed
October 27, 2022Good article nomineeNot listed
June 12, 2023Good article nomineeListed
In the news News items involving this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on January 20, 2020, January 28, 2020, January 31, 2020, February 4, 2020, March 11, 2020, March 16, 2020, and May 6, 2023.
On this day... A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 30, 2024.
Current status: Good article

Current consensus

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NOTE: It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as:
[[Talk:COVID-19 pandemic#Current consensus|current consensus]] item [n]
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1. Superseded by #9
The first few sentences of the lead's second paragraph should state The virus is typically spread during close contact and via respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze.[1][2] Respiratory droplets may be produced during breathing but the virus is not considered airborne.[1] It may also spread when one touches a contaminated surface and then their face.[1][2] It is most contagious when people are symptomatic, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear.[2] (RfC March 2020)
2. Superseded by #7
The infobox should feature a per capita count map most prominently, and a total count by country map secondarily. (RfC March 2020)
3. Obsolete
The article should not use {{Current}} at the top. (March 2020)

4. Do not include a sentence in the lead section noting comparisons to World War II. (March 2020)

5. Cancelled

Include subsections covering the domestic responses of Italy, China, Iran, the United States, and South Korea. Do not include individual subsections for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Japan. (RfC March 2020) Include a short subsection on Sweden focusing on the policy controversy. (May 2020)

Subsequently overturned by editing and recognized as obsolete. (July 2024)
6. Obsolete
There is a 30 day moratorium on move requests until 26 April 2020. (March 2020)

7. There is no consensus that the infobox should feature a confirmed cases count map most prominently, and a deaths count map secondarily. (May 2020)

8. Superseded by #16
The clause on xenophobia in the lead section should read ...and there have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and against those perceived as being Chinese or as being from areas with high infection rates. (RfC April 2020)
9. Cancelled

Supersedes #1. The first several sentences of the lead section's second paragraph should state The virus is mainly spread during close contact[a] and by small droplets produced when those infected cough,[b] sneeze or talk.[1][2][4] These droplets may also be produced during breathing; however, they rapidly fall to the ground or surfaces and are not generally spread through the air over large distances.[1][5][6] People may also become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then their face.[1][2] The virus can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours.[7] Coronavirus is most contagious during the first three days after onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease. (April 2020)

Notes

  1. ^ Close contact is defined as 1 metres (3 feet) by the WHO[1] and 2 metres (6 feet) by the CDC.[2]
  2. ^ An uncovered cough can travel up to 8.2 metres (27 feet).[3]
On 17:16, 6 April 2020, these first several sentences were replaced with an extracted fragment from the coronavirus disease 2019 article, which at the time was last edited at 17:11.

10. The article title is COVID-19 pandemic. The title of related pages should follow this scheme as well. (RM April 2020, RM August 2020)

11. The lead section should use Wuhan, China to describe the virus's origin, without mentioning Hubei or otherwise further describing Wuhan. (April 2020)

12. Superseded by #19
The lead section's second sentence should be phrased using the words first identified and December 2019. (May 2020)
13. Superseded by #15
File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should be used as the visual element of the misinformation section, with the caption U.S. president Donald Trump suggested at a press briefing on 23 April that disinfectant injections or exposure to ultraviolet light might help treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that either could be a viable method.[1] (1:05 min) (May 2020, June 2020)
14. Overturned
Do not mention the theory that the virus was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in the article. (RfC May 2020) This result was overturned at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, as there is consensus that there is no consensus to include or exclude the lab leak theory. (RfC May 2024)

15. Supersedes #13. File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should not be used as the visual element of the misinformation section. (RfC November 2020)

16. Supersedes #8. Incidents of xenophobia and discrimination are considered WP:UNDUE for a full sentence in the lead. (RfC January 2021)

17. Only include one photograph in the infobox. There is no clear consensus that File:COVID-19 Nurse (cropped).jpg should be that one photograph. (May 2021)

18. Superseded by #19
The first sentence is The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). (August 2021, RfC October 2023)

19. Supersedes #12 and #18. The first sentence is The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. (June 2024)

5 Years Later.. Time For The Past Tense

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I have noticed over the course of the past 5 years that there has been a lot of debate surrounding when on this page to switch the tense in regard to the pandemic, whether it was still taking place or if it had concluded. Unfortunately, the argument was as heated as it was due to the politicalization of the encyclopedia, and I really don’t think there is any denying that.

The beginning of this article is still worded in a way that feels unnatural & out of sync with other articles chronicling historic events. People come to Wikipedia to figure out what the event was.

It’s time to replace the compromise that was put in place with wording that aligns with the precedent set by decades of articles. There is no reason to still be in disagreement about this, and the only reason one could say “no, we already compromised and we aren’t going to use ‘was’” is if you are prioritizing your position from years ago, disregarding the fact that time is constantly moving forward, and that as humans we should be happy with this reality. The reality is that the pandemic is over.

Is anyone opposed to rewording the beginning of the article so as not to leave a crucial piece of information out? By not addressing it in the past tense or present tense, it is lacking crucial context. Brickto (talk) 12:16, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong oppose. The pandemic is ongoing according many of the best sources, and will likely be for decades. Bon courage (talk) 12:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not true. Look at the fact alone that there needs to be compromise that leave the information ambiguous as the telltale sign that this isn’t a matter of what is and isn’t true, but a matter or ego & inability to admit it is over.
    That fundamentally damages the encyclopedia.
    Bon courage I got back to you and provided sources. Would you mind sharing the sources you were speaking about?

    .. many of the best sources..

    I would like the opportunity to read these. I went looking and cannot seem to find anything. Brickto (talk) 07:35, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Junk journals and unreliable sources don't really move the needle. While relevant, top-tier sources like the WHO describe a pandemic[1], or explicitly say we are still in "transition" to an endemic phase – see PMID:39956089 – then Wikipedia is bound to follow. What would move the needle is a strong epidemiology/virology source or multinational health organisation discussing why the pandemic is "over", which would seem to be an exceptional claim given that SARS-CoV-2 is still infecting people all over the planet.[2] Note the word "pandemic" means different things in an epidemiological sense, and in a lay sense (where it equates to noticeable public health measures), as has been discussed on this Talk page ad nauseam. Bon courage (talk) 08:33, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bon courage… Excuse me? “Junk” journals? The sources I cited are credible and peer-reviewed.

    The first is published in The European Physical Journal B by Springer Nature—a top global academic publisher. It comes from researchers at Rutgers University and CIMATEC Brazil, and it uses physics-based modeling to explain the decline in COVID severity. Peer-reviewed, data-driven, and published in a real journal.

    The second is literally titled “The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Over”—published in Diseases, a PubMed-indexed medical journal. It’s archived by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). It plainly states: “The global health emergency officially ended on 11 May 2023.”

    There’s nothing fringe about this. It’s institutional consensus and scientific analysis, both confirming the same thing: the pandemic is over. Brickto (talk) 08:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    See WP:MEDFAQ#PUBMEDRIGHT. In particular, WP:MDPI is a questionable publisher. (I'd also add for future reference that editorials are generally not peer-reviewed, and the guy penning this one makes the rookie error of confusing the end of the emergency phase with the pandemic itself. This confusion is covered at Endemic COVID-19). Stick to the WP:BESTSOURCES and all shall be well. Bon courage (talk) 11:58, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bon courage, WP:MEDFAQ is a personal essay. This is what you are basing your argument on? The personally essay itself doesn’t even discredit these sources — “not necessarily” — but again, this is a personal essay. Not a policy or even a guideline.
    You are choosing to ignore the peer-reviewed, science-backed confirmation that the pandemic has ended in favor of political ego. That’s on you. You don’t have to grasp at straws in order to defend your indefensible stance. Brickto (talk) 15:56, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you two even really disagree with each other? COVID-19 isn't over. The global health emergency is. As for the pandemic, well, that depends on your definition of the term. Like the flu, which caused a pandemic 1918, it became endemic. As for the editorial, editorials are opinion pieces. They're opinion pieces by editors, who are typically well-respected and credentialed in their line of work, but are nonetheless still opinions and must be treated as such, with in-text attribution if they're used in a Wikipedia article. Now, you can say that Professor of Gastroenterology at the University Magna Graecia says that the pandemic is over, but Wikipedia can't state someone else's opinion in its own voice. I avoid taking a side in such a dispute between experts, simply stating that it's disputed among experts when or if the pandemic ended, or we would write as if taking what's said by the WHO, that "this does not mean the pandemic itself is over, but the global emergency it caused is – for now", as fact (pending new guidance). I don't appreciate your comments about "political ego, though", Brickto. I bring that up because I see you used the word in two different comments, and I advice you discontinue your hostility to other editors. If anything, you seem to be the one attempting to over­ride consensus for political reasons, and your comment about ego is a borderline personal attack, not to mention a brick thrown in a glass house.
    In conclusion, you can say the emergency is officially over, the virus still lingers, and that, in the opinion of one expert, the pandemic is over, although the WHO never officially announced the end of the pandemic. And no one would bite you for saying it. So why are you biting others for simply not fixing something that isn't broken? Abenavoli says the "The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Over" in the title, yes, but the body references instead "the global health emergency [...] ended". This does not appear to contradict the WHO, which says pretty much the same thing, just a bit more pedantically when it comes to avoiding conflation of global health emergency with pandemic, which I suppose technically have a different meaning. 1101 (talk) 02:21, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Talib1101, I appreciate your input. Maybe you are right that we agree, but perhaps are just defining things differently. I also enjoy a good, healthy debate! The global health emergency is synonymous with the pandemic. An epidemic is an outbreak isolated to a specific region. Then, there is the lingering of COVID which we are talking about, and that is known as endemic, and when as disease is endemic it rarely ends. COVID isn’t just “lingering” — it is going to remain a constant globally. WHO has already confirmed this. So, if we are waiting on the end of the endemicity in order to say the pandemic is over, then it will never end. There is a vaccine. There is control over it now. It is just simply something we will have to live with as a species for the rest of our time here on Earth, and perhaps one day even beyond Earth.

    Once something this infectious spreads all over the world, it can easily become a pandemic, but it lingering all over the world does not mean it remains one. The pandemic by both definition & social interpretation was an event that began at the end of the 2010s, and proceeded to take place and end at the beginning of the 20s.

    History is not going to define it as ongoing at the present moment we are living in. It has ended.

    This doesn’t even remotely mean that COVID is gone. It will never be. If this is really this much of a debate, perhaps there would be benefits in creating Endemicity of COVID-19 ? I’m gonna ping Bon courage so they see this.
    We already have an article Endemic COVID-19, as I aleady said (and linked). Cureus is an even crappier source than the last one. In general the approach Wikipedia takes to NPOV is to focus on the WP:BESTSOURCES and summarize them, not use search engines to try and get random sources to prop up an editor's prior view. When you say "The global health emergency is synonymous with the pandemic" you are simply wrong (as explained in RS). I don't think this conversation is worth continuing and Brickto you need to drop the stick. This is a WP:CTOP if any of the bad behaviour mentioned by Talib1101 recurs, it is unfortunately likely sanctions will be necessary. Bon courage (talk) 05:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bon courage See this is odd. Endemic COVID-19 already exists as an article? There are experts who say it already is endemic. I am just confused as to why you are specifically choosing dated statements from people years ago. There are no current sources saying that the pandemic is ongoing. Almost all experts agree that it has ended.
    I understand you don’t like some of the sources, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t reliable. Harvard School of Public Health? National Institutes of Health? You are just dismissing them entirely? Then what basis do your sources have that make them more credible than some of the most prestigious sources of public health related data? Brickto (talk) 17:24, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand you don’t like some of the sources ← your daft impertinence has gone too far. WP:CIR. I shall not respond further to this crap. Bon courage (talk) 17:28, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bon courage not here to fight, but to have a discussion if that’s alright. I don’t want to make this into an argument, and I know this isn’t a forum, but the discussion still wasn’t really over truly. There are simply too many reliable sources pointing to it having ended 2 years ago.
    The reason I say Endemic COVID-19 is an odd thing to already exists.. is the fact that an article being created about a hypothesized state of an infectious disease, would surly be a careless thing to include in the encyclopedia as a standalone article. Brickto (talk) 17:29, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:38, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Without sources presented there's really no reason to consider changing this. Wikipedia has quite a few topics, like wars, political trends, and so forth, for which their end is gradual and ambiguous, and can't really be named as such until well after the fact. Crossroads -talk- 19:57, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Did the pandemic of 1918 continued well into 1923? I'm asking this because if COVID-19 lasts longer than the 1918 Flu, it means it's more dangerous than the 1918 Flu, which most scientists don't agree with.84.54.72.60 (talk) 11:34, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Length of pandemic does not equate to seriousness, but some pandemics are long (e.g. HIV/AIDS). Anyway, WP:NOTFORUM. Bon courage (talk) 11:43, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed deaths infographic

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Give Ukraine internationally recognized borders and correct purple colour. 31.129.245.26 (talk) 02:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

this is not a political article, it is about a pandemic that has passed(please post elsewhere)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:48, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

COVID-19 pandemic will never end because there is no criteria for ending a pandemic

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Consider the fact COVID-19 is a type of common cold caused by a specific type of virus, in this case SARS coronavirus type 2. As long as this virus circulates in human populations, the pandemic will therefore continue indefinitely. In fact, the first documented pandemic in human history, the flu of 1918 which was later determined to be H1N1 still continues this day after well over 100 years. Therefore, it makes sense no pandemic will never end because there is no criteria for ending a pandemic.

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended 66.22.167.30 (talk) 19:40, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside the dumb 'common cold' comment, that is a rubbish source. See Spanish flu for some decent sourcing putting the end of that pandemic in April 1920. Bon courage (talk) 19:49, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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