‘We have ignored lessons’: how Covid continues to affect lives five years later

Health workers test for Covid-19 in Jericho, New York, on 24 March 2020. Photograph: Steve Pfost/Newsday Getty Images

It’s been five years since the Trump administration declared a nationwide emergency across the US on 13 March 2020, The announcement came days after the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Covid-19 a global pandemic.

Since then, there have been 1,222,603 deaths from Covid in the US. Much of the country, along with the rest of the world, has moved on from the pandemic, with fewer people wearing masks and life returning to the way it was before the outbreak started.