In roughly 40 days, the world will enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, declared on March 11, 2020, prompting countries to massively restrict movement and shut down businesses. While some eased their restrictions over time, others recently reinforced them, thanks to new, highly contagious mutated variants of novel Coronavirus.

Even though the world has vaccines against COVID-19 now, several research studies have found them to be not that effective against the new strains. This has worried scientists, who have reiterated their note of caution: The pandemic is a long way from over.