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Six and a half million dead. More than a hundred times that infected. The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe. But in the final months of the third year of this health crisis, some now claim it\\u2019s all over.

Scientists with key roles in the global response join Claudia Hammond to consider the evidence behind the declarations that the pandemic has finished and they set out how, officially, this global health crisis will be brought to an end.

They reject claims that the pandemic is over, but say the emergency phase of this global health crisis is coming to a close.

But only if countries remain vigilant and maintain pandemic preparedness.

If vaccines reach arms, if treatments are shared equally and if nations re-introduce public health measures like mask wearing and social distancing when the inevitable new waves (and potential new variants) emerge, the appalling loss of life we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, they tell Claudia, won\\u2019t be repeated.

There are stark warnings too that the dramatic global drop in the sequencing of virus samples (which enables us to see how the virus is evolving) is posing a serious risk.

We can\\u2019t react to a new threat, Claudia\\u2019s panel say, if you can\\u2019t see it. Sequencing, as well as testing, has fallen by 90% since January this year, from 100,000 weekly sequences ten months ago to less than 10,000 now. This severely limits the ability to track the known variants (currently 200 sub-lineages of the Omicron variant).

Produced in collaboration with Wellcome and recorded in front of a live audience in Wellcome\\u2019s Reading Room in London, Claudia\\u2019s expert panel includes Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation\\u2019s Technical Lead for Covid-19, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, co-chair of the south African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19 and a member of the Africa Task Force which oversees the African continent\\u2019s response to the virus and Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, the Director of Wellcome and a former adviser to the UK government on its Covid response.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond\\nProduced by: Fiona Hill and Maria Simons \\nStudio Engineers: Giles Aspen and Emma Harth