This article, reflects an oral presentation given on 5 March 2021. Offering remarks and comments on the institutional impact of the anti-COVID measures indicates the institutional relevance of the pandemic. It is argued that the COVID-19 pandemic, notwithstanding its global nature, has marked a gradual retreat from the globalization. It has also marked the ‘return’ of the state -in contrast to the market- as the powerful actor suitable to assume and guarantee the measures necessary to combat the pandemic. The pandemic has also brought up some more general issues, such as the relation between science and politics, the relevance of the Constitution in times of ‘exception’, the reinforcement of the Executive at the cost of the Legislative, the need to accept limitations to the individual rights in order to combat the pandemic, the role and the limits of the Judiciary in times of the exceptional threat posed by the pandemic. The article then briefly presents the anti-COVID measures taken by Greece until the first months of 2021 and ends up raising the question whether the pandemic has created the pattern and mindset for permanent changes in our institutional structures and procedures.