It has been two years since families who were happily planning futures or settling into their golden years had everything cruelly yanked away by an enemy they could not prepare for: COVID-19.
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A 24-year-old first-time mother in Lima, Peru, sobbing because the baby girl she just delivered would never meet her father.
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A 64-year-old California woman embracing her husband through tears and his last breaths in a hospital COVID-19 unit.
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Then there were the dead who had to be temporarily buried in a trench in New York City’s Hart Island, with only workers clad in protective gear nearby.
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Friday marks the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus a full-on pandemic, a pivotal moment in an outbreak that would go on to kill more than 6 million people around the globe. Images taken by Associated Press photographers since then capture the devastation and disruption from the pandemic in every corner of the world.
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From the onset of the pandemic, simple errands suddenly required well thought-out game plans. In Wuhan in central China, residents in one neighborhood had to climb onto chairs to order meat or vegetables from masked vendors behind special barriers.
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A woman in Argentina settles for holding her elderly father’s hand through a plastic sleeve because physical contact at his senior living facility is forbidden.
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Then there was how to care for the dead. Cleric women wearing protective clothing as well as 'chador,' a head-to-toe garment, carefully preparing the body of a coronavirus victim for a funeral in Iran.
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Funeral workers using a boat to take a coffin holding an 86-year-old woman suspected of dying of COVID-19 down a river in Brazil.
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In India, residents in New Delhi said goodbye to loved ones on burning funeral pyres at the site of a makeshift crematorium.
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But in all that darkness, there were small victories. An 84-year-old woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who spent weeks hospitalized for the virus pumps her fists in celebration after learning she will be discharged.
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In Barcelona, a 60-year-old man who was in the ICU for more than 50 days lies in a hospital bed on a promenade, taking in the view of the Mediterranean sea as part of his recovery.
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A woman in Brussels bangs a pot on her balcony during lockdown, exemplifying the renewed admiration for health care workers around the world.
Image Credit: AP
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New Yorkers who died during the pandemic are projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge during a commemoration ceremony.
Image Credit: AP
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