‘The loss is omnipresent’: the grieving daughter fighting for a US Covid memorial day

A nurse attaches a ‘Covid Patient’ sticker on the body bag of a patient who died of coronavirus in Los Angeles. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

For Kristin Urquiza, there are two dimensions: before Covid, and with it. It’s as if the arrow of time veered off into an entirely new direction, to a world where nearly one million of our loved ones have vanished and millions more are struggling with the long-term effects of a mysterious illness.

“It feels like my father disappeared,” Urquiza said. Her father died on 30 June 2020, at the age of 65, in an Arizona hospital with only an ICU nurse holding his hand. “That shadow, or that loss, is omnipresent.”