In the last 20 years, HPI published about 100 papers with health literacy as a keyword. Three—each about 10 years apart—are particularly helpful to understand where health literacy stands at this point. Twenty years ago, Don Nutbeam proposed three levels of health literacy: functional health literacy, interactive health literacy and critical health literacy (Nutbeam, 2000). I have found them helpful to analyze health literacy in the context of COVID-19 and to consider actions that need to be taken from a health promotion perspective. Many of these are in the political sphere and require interventions beyond the health system and even at the global level. This reinforces Evelyne de Leeuw’s analysis (de Leeuw, 2012) of 10 years ago that a third wave of health literacy is beginning to address a broader ecosystem and the political determinants of health. There is of course also a growing recognition of health literacy as a crucial concept to address the COVID-19 crisis (Van den Broucke, 2020).