PORTLAND, Ore.
The fully vaccinated and boosted restaurant server planned to keep her mask on, but as the reggaeton star Bad Bunny took the stage and the energy in the crowd soared, she ripped it off.
It was March 11, 2020 when the WHO issued its declaration, driving home the severity of the threat faced by a virus that at that point had wreaked havoc primarily in Italy and China.
The emergence of the vaccine in December 2021 saved countless lives but political divisions, hesitancy and inequality in health systems have kept millions of people around the world from getting inoculated, prolonging the pandemic.
since a mid-January pandemic peak, dropping to the lowest levels since July 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In its latest pandemic report, the WHO said infections and deaths are down across the globe, with only one region — the Western Pacific — seeing a rise in cases.
Julie Kim, chief nursing officer at Providence St.
The pandemic has eased to the point that as of Tuesday, there were just four COVID-19 patients at the hospital, Kim said, and medical staff feels more prepared to treat the disease with the knowledge gained in those darkest days.
“It’s hard to use the word ‘normal,’ because I don’t think we will ever get back to a pre-COVID state.
Albert Ko, an infectious-disease physician and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said it’s certainly good news that the U.S.
In Portland, people are heading back to movie theaters, concerts and gyms after a long, dark winter and bars and restaurants are filling up once more.
Kalani Pa, who owns an Anytime Fitness franchise with his wife in the Portland suburbs, said the past two years almost drove him out of business — but with Oregon’s mask mandate ending Friday, his small gym is suddenly coming to life again.
Jaclyn Chavira remembers the fear on peoples’ faces as they lined up by the thousands in Los Angeles to be tested during the late 2020 surge, which triggered an astonishing 250,000 infections and more than 3,000 deaths a day across the U.S.
At the height of the omicron surge, Chavira’s nonprofit called CORE did 94,000 tests a week at 10 sites in Los Angeles County.
Not everyone, however, is ready to dive back in.
Amber Pierce, who works in a Portland bar-restaurant, was out of work for almost a year due to COVID-related layoffs and narrowly dodged an infection herself when the virus swept through her workplace.