We asked 19 photographers to revisit their most enduring images of the coronavirus pandemic, five years after the virus became a global threat. Their photographs transport us to that bewildering period in an uncanny sort of time travel.

The journalists who captured these scenes were not just covering the Covid-19 story but living through it. To bear witness at a time of lockdowns and isolation, they had to be in the world, navigating fear and uncertainty.

The images evoke how we felt and what we lost, as well as human resilience and connection at a time of crisis.

— Meaghan Looram

Hong Kong. January 2020

The First Patient

One night in January 2020, the Food and Health Bureau of Hong Kong announced that a male traveler from Wuhan, China, had a fever and was suspected of being infected with the novel coronavirus.

I rushed by high-speed rail to the hospital where the patient was. It was crowded with journalists. By a back door, paramedics were in full protective gear. Eventually, he was wheeled out on a stretcher. We were so close that I could see his sweat. He was transferred to an isolation hospital, where he later tested positive.

— Lam Yik Fei