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 Early lab tests in China pointed to a new coronavirus. By Jan. 20 it
had spread to three countries.
For most people, it was a minor health scare unfolding half a world
away.
Nearly a year later it has changed lives fundamentally. Almost
everyone has been affected, be it through illness, losing loved ones
or jobs, being confined at home and having to get used to a whole
new way of working, relaxing and interacting.
Almost 1.5 million people have died globally from the COVID-19
disease related to the coronavirus, and some 63 million people have
been infected.
After the initial "wave" of the pandemic was brought under some
semblance of control in many countries, nations are now fighting
second and third waves even greater than the first, forcing new
restrictions on everyday life.
Among the most haunting images to emerge from the pandemic in 2020
are those of medics on the frontlines of the battle against the
virus.
In Milan's San Raffaele hospital, seven intensive care unit staff
attended to an 18-year-old patient suffering from COVID-19, pushing
the bed into the ward and holding medical equipment and monitors.
Doctors and nurses like them swathed in protective gear - gowns,
gloves, masks, and visors, some with their names or initials written
on their uniforms - have become a familiar sight.
So, too, have images of medics collapsing from exhaustion or grief
at losing one of their own to the disease.
By March and April many countries began to impose lockdowns and
social distancing to slow the spread of the highly contagious virus.
Structures to separate and protect people sprang up - from
transparent screens at supermarket checkouts to the plastic sheet
which allowed 83-year-old Lily Hendrickx, a resident at a Belgian
nursing home, to hug Marie-Christine Desoer, the home's director.
The effects on the natural world of the shutdown were sometimes
astonishing. Birdsong could be heard like never before in towns and
wild animals ventured into newly empty cities.
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At the usually crowded Golden Gate Bridge View Vista Point across from San
Francisco, a coyote stood by the roadside.
Even the streets of Manhattan were eerily empty.
Ballet dancer Ashlee Montague donned a gas mask and danced in the middle of
Times Square, New York.
In Brazil's capital, Brasilia, Catholic priest Jonathan Costa prayed alone at
the Santuario Dom Bosco church, among photographs of the faithful, attached to
the pews.
Wearing masks to combat the spread of the virus became commonplace the world
over.
At Tokyo's Shinagawa train station, crowds of commuters wore face masks, as did
prisoners crowded into a cell in El Salvador's Quezaltepeque jail.
In private homes, families learned to live together 24 hours a day and how to
entertain and teach their children.
In San Fiorano in northern Italy, school teacher Marzio Toniolo, 35, took a
picture of his two-year-old daughter Bianca painting his toenails bright red.
The pandemic hit some of the world's poorest people the hardest - exposing the
inequalities in access to medical treatment and in government funds to
compensate people who lost their livelihoods.
In South Africa in May, at the Itireleng informal settlement near Laudium suburb
in Pretoria, people waited in a queue that stretched as far as the eye could see
to receive food aid.
As 2020 heads to its close, vaccines are on the horizon. There is hope that some
aspects of life as we knew it will return.
(Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
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