How COVID upended life as we knew it in a matter of weeks
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[December 03, 2020]
By Alexandra Hudson
(Reuters) - On Jan. 1, 2020, as the world
welcomed a new decade, Chinese authorities in Wuhan shut down a seafood
market in the central city of 11 million, suspecting that an outbreak of
a new "viral pneumonia" affecting 27 people might be linked to the site.
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.
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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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![](../images/120320PIX/news_r33.jpg)
Multiple members of medical staff in protective suits are needed to
move an 18-year old COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at
the San Raffaele hospital during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
outbreak in Milan, Italy, March 27, 2020. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo/File
Photo
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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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