This article overviews studies exploring the COVID‑19 pandemic’s impact on education systems and their responses to lockdown restrictions, comparing available findings with international statistics based on continuous education system monitoring. Global organizations acknowledge disruption of classical educational processes and emergency transition to distance learning during the pandemic. Scientific literature examines accessibility of online education, alternative forms of distance learning, and the pandemic-induced financial constraints on universities inhibiting new construction, social support for students, scholarship application, professional development of faculty members, and research growth. The pandemic illuminated the issue of inequality in education, which worsened as a result of emergency transition to online studies. In particular, researchers focus on the most vulnerable groups of students, such as children from low-income families, children from migrant backgrounds, and students with disabilities.Projects aimed at studying the digitalization of education account for the biggest chunk of research inspired by the new pandemic reality. A number of studies discuss not just a formal transition to distance learning but a major technological turn that allows using the unique opportunities provided by digital technologies, which is especially important when teaching medical students.Theoretical inquiry is a distinctive feature of scientific discourse, as compared to the discourse of international expert and analytical reports on the problems of education in the context of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Research on changes to the learning process makes it possible to reconstruct the direct and indirect, as well as latent, threats of the pandemic.