From chaos to clarity: The scientometric breakthrough in COVID-19 research

•First global overview of publications on COVID-19 in the 2 worst years of the pandemic.•Retrieving all scientififc literature in the main global database on COVID-19.•Continental trends: sustainability (Europe); material sciences (Asia); mental health (Africa).•Scientific knowledge must be the basis for decision-making and policy formulation. The COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed the world for over three years, generating unprecedented social changes in recent human history. We aimed to scientometrically summarize a global and temporal overview of publications on COVID-19 in the two worst years of the pandemic and its progression in early 2022, after the start of vaccination. Methods: Using the Web of Science database, this review covered the period from late 2019 to March 2022 and included all publications identified using the following terms: “SARS-CoV-2”, “COVID-19”, “Coronavirus Disease 19”, and “2019-nCoV”. We retrieved 268,904 publications, with evident global spreading, demonstrating that the pandemic triggered worldwide scientific research efforts. Within the dataset, 195 countries have published about Covid-19. In initial publications, a solid trend in genotyping, sequencing, and detection of the virus was evident; however, in the development of the pandemic, new knowledge and research focus gained relevance, with continental solid trends, revealed by the keywords sustainability (eastern Europe); material sciences (Asia); public and mental health (Africa); information sciences (western Europe); education (Latin America). It identified high-impact research, mainly on diagnosis and vaccines, but also equally essential topics for returning life to the new normal, such as mental health, education, and remote work. The world experienced a highly transmissible infection that proved how fragile we are regarding organization and society. It is necessary to learn from such an event and establish a protocol of actions and measures to be taken and avoided in a health emergency, aiming to act differently from the chaos experienced during the pandemic. Following the One Health approach, humanity must be aware of the need for more sustainable attitudes, given the inseparability of human beings from the environment.