No one knows! Covid's a virus, it mutates, and it's unusually persistent. Last week I heard the original Chinese version is undetectable now. Viruses replicate far faster than organisms and a year is plenty of time to evolve.
Each new generation of the virus is slightly different, and a few branches of the family have proved more dangerous than others. Unpleasant variations have appeared in South Africa, Brazil, and the UK, but the virus can mutate anywhere in the world and almost certainly is.
In the UK two different exceptionally nasty variants have been detected. Not because the UK is a plague pit, more likely because we happen to have world-class facilities for testing DNA and can detect new variants faster than most.
Although mutation is scary in science fiction, Covid is as likely to degrade in the real world as it is to burst out. It might just fade into the background.
At the moment the only way of controlling Covid is to make it harder for people to spread it: isolate, wear masks, keep clean, and ban unnecessary meetings etc. If the vaccines prove effective and continue to work over time, or the virus naturally fizzles out, then the number of people made seriously ill will drop to an acceptable level and we can all go back to normal.
Also heard on Radio 4, two attempts to answer the question: If all the Covid virus in the world were collected together, how much space would it take up? The answers were on the same page: low estimate, about a small shot-glass full, high estimate, half a can of Coca Cola, roughly 150ml.
We live in interesting times.
Dave