THE face-masks have all but gone, so too the social distancing. The press conferences, featuring those familiar medical experts accompanied by a welter of statistics, have disappeared from our TV screens.

Now the headlines, which were dominated daily by the latest negative twist in the pandemic, have moved on to other equally depressing matters.

As they unpicked the restrictions, our political leaders told us how we would now have to “live with Covid,” which has taken so many of our loved ones and left families bereft.

Others, some two million of us, meantime, continue to struggle with the effects of “long Covid,” including fatigue, shortness of breath and brain fog. Nearly 400,000 have suffered such symptoms for two years or more.

Since the beginning of the year estimates for long Covid across the UK have risen sharply from 1.3m in January to 1.8m by April thanks to the more transmissible Omicron variant.

Thankfully, the UK’s general number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths has been falling; in Scotland, levels resumed their downward trend after a small jump in mid-May.

Total infections have fallen by 81% since the Omicron wave peaked in late March, meaning the rate has now reached its lowest level since September.

The famous coronavirus map was not too long ago filled with dark purples, confirming high case numbers, but is now showing more benign greens.

Yet the global numbers are stark: more than 530m cases of Covid, 6.3m deaths and nearly 12 billion vaccine doses administered since the pandemic struck.

For all the progress we’ve made thanks to self-sacrifice and vaccinations, worrying signs still exist.

After the winter surge of infections was caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, in the last month two more “variants of concern” have been recorded, BA.4 and BA.5, which, worryingly, are even more infectious.

The latest spike in Portugal is being driven by BA.5 despite the warmer weather. Over the last two months, some 1,455 people there have died from the virus. On Wednesday, another 47 deaths were recorded with almost 27,000 new cases confirmed.

This week, the German Government warned: “The very infectious variant BA.4/BA.5 is on the march here too. This could become the next wave in the autumn.”

Days ago the authorities in Shanghai took steps towards reopening China’s largest city after a two-month lockdown that has restricted millions of people to their homes and badly shaken the national economy but in neighbouring India a jump in cases has raised fears of yet another wave.

More countries are now vaccinating their citizens with some prioritising the old and clinically vulnerable but there are still many with low rates like Nigeria and Sudan at 13%, Malawi 8%, Cameroon 6% and the Democratic Republic of Congo just 2%.

The situation in North Korea is also causing concern. Three weeks after announcing its first coronavirus case, Pyongyang suggested around 15% of the population had the virus with 70 deaths recorded.

But the World Health Organisation[WHO] fears the situation is "getting worse, not better," given the country’s poor healthcare system and lack of vaccines.

More unsettling, another variant, BA.2.12.1, is even more transmissible and has become the dominant strain in America, where death numbers have topped more than 1m. The US is now experiencing its fourth largest wave with around 94,000 new cases every day.

On the brighter side, there seems nothing to show any of the new variants make people more ill than the original Omicron.

But even if the UK is succeeding in bringing the health effects of Covid under control, its other consequences have been significant and will last for some time.

Economically, the reawakening of industrial output and consumer demand after two years of pandemic hibernation has been the underlying cause of the cost-of living crisis.

Socially, some people have decided to leave the workplace altogether while others have changed their habit of working; doing it either completely or partially from home. Plus, we have the NHS backlogs and holiday travel disruption.

Politically, Boris Johnson’s tolerance of a drinking culture in Downing St during lockdown, becoming the first serving prime minister to break the law, could ultimately lead to his downfall.

Within weeks, the long-awaited statutory inquiry into how the UK Government handled the Covid pandemic is expected to begin with all the political ramifications that could create.

High infection rates and high vaccination levels have helped to bring the global coronavirus numbers down but more people are returning to their pre-pandemic habits and immunity wanes. There is expected to be a big booster push across the UK in the autumn as the threat of yet another wave – I’ve lost count – emerges.

While the social restrictions across Britain have disappeared, there are some, notably older people and the most vulnerable, who are continuing to wear masks on public transport and socially distance in crowded places.

However, it’s been noticeable over this extended bank holiday weekend that any social restrictions have been enthusiastically dropped. Months ago the crowded scenes of Platinum Jubilee celebrations in the Mall would have been branded a super-spreader event; now, few even raise an eyebrow at them.

On Friday at an international conference in Slovakia, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that coronavirus cases and deaths were “near their lowest levels since the beginning of the pandemic” but then stressed: “It’s still far too early to say the pandemic is over…Increasing transmission plus decreasing testing and sequencing, plus 1 billion people still unvaccinated, equals a dangerous situation.”

He added: “There remains a real and present danger of a new and more virulent variant emerging that evades our vaccines.”

It is completely understandable people want to consign the Covid plague to history given how we have suffered its consequences for more than two years. But it’s clear this shape-shifting virus hasn’t finished with us yet.

Given all that the country has sacrificed, complacency cannot be allowed to take hold. However much we want to be rid of the coronavirus monster, we must stay vigilant against its menace.