A year and a half into the pandemic, millions of Texans have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 57,000 have died. Vaccines brought family reunions and the hopeful, albeit short-lived, promise of a semi-normal summer. But with less than half of Texas’ population fully vaccinated, the more contagious Delta variant of the virus took hold and confirmed cases and hospitalizations surged in July and August. When this pandemic ends, it will leave behind scars far beyond what is captured in those numbers: jobs lost; homes lost; relationships, people, places, ways of life lost.
For more than a year, we’ve been following a group of Texans from across the state, chronicling the ways the pandemic has altered their lives in overlapping yet infinitely different ways. The first part of this series was published last September and the second, this March. In this third installment, we hear from these folks as they cautiously navigate their way into this next uncertain chapter. These are ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. We’re grateful to them for sharing their stories.
