BALTIMORE — Five years to the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, local leaders in COVID-19-related health care say the virus has forever changed Maryland, the U.S. and the world — in some ways, they said, for the better.

The WHO declared the pandemic on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, when case numbers and the number of countries where the virus was appearing had spiked alarmingly in just two weeks. The next day, Gov. Larry Hogan announced that Maryland would close schools for two weeks, a period that stretched into 18 months of virtual learning for most. Soon, workplaces shut down, grocery stores limited their hours, and hand sanitizer and face masks became staples in many homes as researchers raced to develop a vaccine.

Ultimately, the pandemic killed 1.2 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. Both the WHO and the U.S. ended their COVID-19 emergency declarations in 2023, with many doctors shifting to treating COVID like the flu: a virus for which outbreaks will continue to ebb and flow.

Maryland suffered 1.5 million cases; 18,352 died from the virus within the state’s borders, state data says. One hundred and eight are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Maryland Department of Health. Seven are children.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a lasting effect on the country and our state, several Maryland medical experts said, as the lessons learned have put communities in a better position in the event of another pandemic.

“From my standpoint, I do think we’re better,” said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, co-founder and co-director of Johns Hopkins’ Medicine for the Greater Good, a curriculum that works to improve medical messaging to communities across different cultures.

Galiatsatos, who is triple-board certified in internal medicine, intensive care and pulmonology, worked in the intensive care unit during the pandemic. He held the hand of well over 100 people as they died, he said, “because their families would request they not pass away alone.”

While Galiatsatos was working in the ICU, he was also working to improve lines of communication with different neighborhoods and groups of people across the city with Medicine for the Greater Good. The organization connected with hundreds of religious and community leaders, strengthening medical messaging and learning how best to approach different communities to ensure they had access to concise, actionable information.

“If there’s a silver lining of the pandemic,” Galiatsos said, “if another public health crisis comes along we can streamline medical messaging as best we can and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”

The medical community “needs to recognize how cultures take in information,” he said. “If you infringe on it, that’s how you create a lot of friction.”

This is a big shift from medical messaging at the start of the pandemic, which relied largely on scientists and doctors standing at podiums, Galiatsos said. In turn, many people across the U.S. turned to people they trusted to interpret the information for them, and the message didn’t always land.

Dr. Laura Malone, the executive director of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a research and treatment facility for children with special needs, agreed.

“The pandemic was such a shift in daily lives for Marylanders and people all across the United States,” Malone said. “So much has changed in the past five years. Think about where we were and what we didn’t know in March 2020.”

Too, Malone noted, the medical community has come a long way in learning how to identify and treat COVID-19, resulting in much better outcomes for most patients.

While history shows us that it is almost certain another pandemic will occur, Malone said, she added that the COVID-19 pandemic taught us a lot about how to navigate a highly infectious virus.

“Doctors are continuing to develop rapid advances in scientific innovations and clinical treatments,” Malone said. “Since 2020, ideas like remote learning, hybrid working, telehealth meetings, and more have been integrated into our culture.

“Most of all, Maryland knows how to come together as a community and would certainly be able to do so again.”

However, not all outcomes are good for those infected with the virus — and not all the changes are positive.

Malone said since the pandemic began, her practice has seen a lot of children come in with debilitating fatigue and post-exertional malaise.

“These experiences have always existed, but they weren’t nearly as common before the pandemic,” Malone said. “We also are seeing a lot of children with new dizziness, brain fog, or cognitive difficulties after having COVID.”

Those who’ve had multiple COVID infections are also at greater risk of developing Long COVID — a chronic condition with varied symptoms — according to the CDC. Studies are now underway to learn about the condition and find ways to prevent it.

Harder to quantify are the effects of the lost time for many groups — including grandparents who were cut off from their grandchildren, and students from their classmates and friends — and the lost loved ones.

“Calling us doctors doesn’t make us less human,” Galiatsos said of the difficulty of tending to his neighbors as the coronavirus took their lives.

Health care workers on the front lines like Galiatsos were hailed as heroes throughout the pandemic, and righfully so, suggested Chase Cook, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Health.

“We are proud of the work that thousands of health care officials, community health workers, case investigators and epidemiologists have done during the past five years to protect Marylanders,” he said. “However, our work is not done when it comes to fighting COVID-19. We continue to encourage Maryland residents to talk to a health care provider or visit vaccines.gov to find an updated COVID-19 vaccine near them.”

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