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Since last year, people around the world have been wondering when are things going to get back to normal.
Globally, we're not there yet. The nation of India recently became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Johns Hopkins University says it's still recording hundreds of thousands of new positive tests per day but there has been a steady decrease in that number over the past week or so.
International health officials have reported roughly 164 million COVID cases since the virus started spreading last year.
It's been cited as a factor of more than three million deaths. Since an estimated 40 percent of people who catch the disease don't show symptoms and may not get tested, it's overall survival rate is estimated at around 99.5 percent. But the risk is higher for older people and those who had certain health conditions before catching it.
As far as treatments go, a lot of focus has been on vaccines. There are several of them being used around the world. They were developed faster than any other vaccines in history, but there's also been extensive research on existing therapeutic drugs. Several of them have been shown to help people recover or avoid hospitalizations related to coronavirus.
One of the latest is an asthma drug studied at Oxford University. There are still shortages of different materials impacted by COVID related shutdowns.
Toilet paper is no longer one of them but computer chips, bicycles, wood, steel, gasoline. These are all in short supply.
That's having impacts on the prices of goods and homes. American communities are returning to normalcy at different paces. In some areas, it's been more or less business as usual since last summer with meetings being held, sports being played, trips being made. In others where businesses were closed and people were more isolated for longer periods of time, there could be more of an adjustment period when life returns to the way it was.
