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COVID-19 was one of the costliest and deadliest pandemics in the recent history of pandemics. Despite many warnings, the world was not prepared for it. The complexity of the nature of the virus and weak national health systems made monitoring of its progress difficult, despite the leadership that the World Health Organization displayed. This paper reviews the origins of COVID-19 and the human and financial costs of its spread, even among developed countries. Vaccines were an important innovation emerging from the tragedy that illustrated the importance of international cooperation between developed and developing countries and offered important lessons for the future. This paper makes the case for continued development and investment of health systems both in developing and developed countries as a critical pillar of development.