A look at virus's impact as deaths surpass 1 million

As it marched from East to West this year, the coronavirus pandemic sank economies and transformed social interactions. It shut schools and businesses, stopped the sports and entertainment industries dead in their tracks, and even brought low the Olympic Games. 

And it killed. One million deaths have been recorded worldwide to date, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.

The effects were global — but also personal. The virus changed how people socialized and shopped, worked and dressed. It changed how they cared for their loved ones and how they mourned them.

View fullsize

A woman wearing white protective gear, foreground, mourns after taking a glimpse of her husband's body, a victim of COVID 19, at a cremation site in Gauhati, India, Sept. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

It even changed the language they used. The word “hero” was employed with more frequency — and the definition expanded to include delivery and sanitation workers, cleaners and waiters. And, of course, health care workers, who in China and Italy, Iran and South Africa, the United States and Brazil toiled in hazmat suits for hours on end to treat the sick. 

The virus changed how people interacted and how they thought about interaction. People isolated to stay healthy — and then worried about what isolation was doing to their health. 

In Spain, one of the hardest-hit countries, nursing home residents were shut off from the outside world for months in an effort to protect them. When visitors were allowed again, husbands and wives pressed lips to plastic sheeting for several minutes; mothers and daughters clutched each other through the film.

View fullsize

Agustina Cañamero, 81, and Pascual Pérez, 84, hug and kiss through a plastic film screen to avoid contracting the coronavirus at a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, June 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Many people were unable to say goodbye to their loved ones because of restrictions at hospitals; others held them in their final moments, draped head-to-toe in protective gear. Funerals were also sterile affairs, if they happened at all.

And still the pandemic is far from over. The toll is climbing. By around 5,000 a day, a death every 17 seconds somewhere in the world.

Cemetery workers carry the coffin that contains the remains of Wilson Gil, who family members say died of COVID-19 related complications, to a burial site at the Martires 19 de Julio cemetery on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

A learner, wearing a face mask and shield returns to the Melpark Primary School in Johannesburg, Monday, Aug. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

Relatives of Tranquilino Ruiz Cabrera, who worked as a taxi driver and died from COVID-19 related complications, mourn during his burial at Asuncions's Recoleta Cemetery, in Paraguay, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

Health workers attend to a colleague who fainted due to exhaustion and long working hours at a COVID-19 testing center in New Delhi, India, Monday, April 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Jose Collantes holds his daughter Kehity by the grave of his wife, her mother, Silvia Cano, who died of the new coronavirus at age 37, as they visit her grave one month after burying her at the Catholic Cemetery in Santiago, Chile, Aug. 5, 2020. “Daddy, daddy, why did mommy die?” asks his 5-year-old. "Because she was sick,” he answers, not knowing what to say but feeling he has to respond. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

People pass by an empty coffin placed outside a public market to remind people to stay home as the government relaxes quarantine measures against the COVID19 on Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020 in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

A health worker wearing a protective suit is disinfected inside a portable tent outside the Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center during an enhanced community quarantine to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in Manila, Philippines, April 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Children wearing face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus read the Quran at a religious school in a mosque, in Karachi, Pakistan, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

A woman carries a child past residents dancing in an old neighborhood in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, April 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Medical workers make preparations at a temporary field hospital set up at Asia World Expo in Hong Kong, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Nurses and doctors clear the area before defibrillating a patient with COVID-19 who went into cardiac arrest, Monday, April 20, 2020, at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

A woman wearing a mask crosses the street in front of a mural about traffic accidents reading, "NOT ONE MORE DEATH" in the Brooklyn borough of New York, March 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

A worshipper wearing protective face mask and gloves to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus weeps as she prays during Arafat Day in the mosque of Tehran University, Iran, Thursday, July 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island, Thursday, April 9, 2020, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

An Indian homeless man sits in a bus as he is being evicted with other homeless people and migrant laborers from the banks of Yamuna River where they have been squatting during lockdown in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, April 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Lucas Lopez, 9, who along with his younger brother had to accompany their gravedigger dad to work Tuesday since there was no one to stay home with them to attend televised school classes, sits between graves as another worker digs, in a section of the Valle de Chalco Municipal Cemetery which opened early in the new coronavirus pandemic to accommodate the surge in deaths, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A woman wearing a protective face mask stands near a fire lit next to her brother's grave in a cemetery in Herasti, Romania, April 11, 2020, during a Orthodox Palm Sunday memorial for the departed. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Funeral director Tom Cheeseman wears personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns as he collects a body from a nursing home, Friday, April 3, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. “We took a sworn oath to protect the dead, this is what we do,” he said. “We’re the last responders. Our job is just as important as the first responders." (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Fernanda Mariotti cradles a picture of her mother Martha Pedrotti, who passed away a victim of COVID-19, at her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020. Mariotti believes that her mother eventually died in part from a heart condition and also from the sorrow and fear of being separated from her family, isolated in the COVID unit. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

An elderly woman, a patient with coronavirus, breaths with an oxygen mask inside a hospital in Pochaiv, Ukraine, May 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Cleric women wearing protective clothing and "chador," a head-to-toe garment, arrive a cemetery to prepare the body of a victim who died from the new coronavirus for a funeral, in the city of Ghaemshahr, in north of Iran, Thursday, April 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Piedrangel funeral home worker Anibal Rosado is reflected in a window of a company van as he prepares to help deliver to relatives, urns that contain the cremated ashes of people who are suspected to have died from the new coronavirus, in Lima, Peru, Monday, May 4, 2020. Edgard Gonzales, who owns the funeral home with his three brothers, says Piedrangel cremates all COVID-19 victims. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Sabatino Di Girolamo, center, mayor of Roseto degli Abruzzi, with his son Francesco, right, and his sister Marisa Di Felice, mourns his mother Annunziata, laid in state in the morgue of the Giuseppe Mazzini Hospital in Teramo, central Italy, Tuesday, May 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

Graves are decorated with crosses and grass in a section of the Valle de Chalco Municipal Cemetery which opened early in the coronavirus pandemic to accommodate the surge in deaths, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

An image of veteran Stephen Kulig is projected onto the home of his daughter, Elizabeth DeForest, as she looks out the window of a spare bedroom as her husband, Kevin, sits downstairs in Chicopee, Mass., Sunday, May 3, 2020. Kulig, a U.S. Navy veteran and resident of the Soldier's Home in Holyoke, Mass., died from the COVID-19 virus at the age of 92. After saying goodbye to her father for the last time in person, Elizabeth slept in the spare bedroom upstairs for two weeks as a precaution against possibly infecting her husband. Seeking to capture moments of private mourning at a time of global isolation, the photographer used a projector to cast large images of veterans on to the homes as their loved ones are struggling to honor them during a lockdown that has sidelined many funeral traditions. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Musician Arif Mirbaghi plays double bass at the yard of his house during mandatory self-isolation due to the coronavirus outbreak in Tehran, Iran on April 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Josefa Ribas, 86, who is bedridden and suffers from dementia, is attended to by nurse Laura Valdes during a home care visit in Barcelona, Spain, April 7, 2020. Ribas' husband, Jose Marcos, fears what will happen if the virus enters their home and infects them. "I survived the post-war period (of mass hunger). I hope I survive this pandemic," he said. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Ruth Morales, 36, center, waits for the arrival of the coffin of her husband, Juan Paucar Quispe, 63, who died from COVID-19 complications, during his burial at a cemetery in Carabayllo, Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

SOS Funeral workers transport by boat the coffin containing the body of a suspected COVID-19 victim that died in a river-side community near Manaus, Brazil on May 14, 2020. The victim, an 86-year-old woman, lived by the Negro river, the largest tributary to the Amazon river. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

A patient affected with COVID-19 lies on a bed in a Marseille hospital, southern France, Thursday, Sept.10, 2020. As the Marseille region has become France's latest virus hotspot, hospitals are re-activating emergency measures in place when the pandemic first hit to ensure they're able to handle growing new cases. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Tri Novia Septiani cries during an online memorial service marking the 40th day since the death of her fiance Dr. Michael Robert Marampe who died of COVID-19, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on June 5, 2020. Marampe knew what he wanted to be since he was a kid: a doctor and a pianist. He became both, and his passion for music even led him to Septiani - a woman he never got to marry because he got the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)

Mortician Cordarial O. Holloway, foreground left, funeral director Robert L. Albritten, foreground right, and funeral attendants Eddie Keith, background left, and Ronald Costello place a casket into a hearse on April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A primary school student reacts sending kisses and a hug from a distance to her teacher, as she collects her personal belongings, during the closing of the school year in a school in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, June 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Funeral home workers in protective suits carry the coffin of a woman who died from COVID-19 into a hearse in Katlehong, near Johannesburg, South Africa, July 21 2020. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

The family of Larry Hammond wave as a line of cars with friends and family, who could not attend his funeral because of limits of gatherings of more than 10 people, due to the coronavirus pandemic, pass by their home, in New Orleans, April 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Members of the Shiite Imam Ali brigades militia take a break during funerals of coronavirus victims at Wadi al-Salam cemetery near Najaf, Iraq, Sunday, July 19, 2020. A special burial ground near the Wadi al-Salam cemetery has been created specifically for COVID-19 victims since rejections of such burials have continued in Baghdad cemeteries and elsewhere in Iraq. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil)

People wearing face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus gather in a nightclub in Madrid, Spain, early Saturday, July 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Pathologists in protective suits transport the body of a person who died of the coronavirus at a hospital's morgue in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Wednesday, July 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

Martina Papponetti, 25, a nurse at the Humanitas Gavazzeni Hospital in Bergamo, Italy poses for a portrait at the end of her shift Friday, March 27, 2020. Their eyes are tired. Their cheekbones rubbed raw from protective masks. They don't smile. The doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy are almost unrecognizable behind their masks, scrubs, gloves and hairnets - the flimsy battle armor donned at the start of each shift as the only barrier to contagion. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

Family members look in the coffin that contains the remains of Manuela Chavez who died from symptoms related to the new coronavirus at the age of 88, during a burial service in the Shipibo Indigenous community of Pucallpa, in Peru's Ucayali region, Monday, Aug. 31, 2020. The Shipibo have tried to prevent COVID-19's entrance by blocking off roads and isolating themselves. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Romelia Navarro, 64, weeps while hugging her husband, Antonio, in his final moments in a COVID-19 unit at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif., Friday, July 31, 2020. Antonio was nurse Michel Younkin’s first COVID-19 patient to pass on her watch. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

An employee at a woodworking station works on a section of a casket at the production warehouse of Aninco in Peer, Belgium, Thursday, April 9, 2020. Aninco has been in extra production in the last weeks due to an increase in funerals of Covid-19 patients. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Health workers wearing personal protective equipment carry the body of a COVID-19 victim for cremation in Gauhati, India, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

A woman sunbathes on the rocks in Saint-Tropez, southern France, Saturday Aug 8, 2020. The glamorous French Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez is requiring face masks outdoors starting Saturday, threatening to sober the mood in a place renowned for high-end, free-wheeling summer beach parties. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

A worker from "Hevra Kadisha," Israel's official Jewish burial society, prepares a body before a funeral procession at a special morgue for COVID-19 victims in the central Israeli city of Holon, near Tel Aviv, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Workers remove the stretcher as others prepare to cremate the body of a COVID-19 victim in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Standing just inside the doorway of his home in a black button down shirt tucked into navy blue trousers, 11-year-old Oscar Rojas greets his teacher Gerardo Ixcoy, known universally as "Lalito 10", in Santa Cruz del Quiche, Guatemala, Wednesday, July 15, 2020. "Teacher Lalito only comes for a little while to teach me, but I learn a lot." (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Workers lower a coffin containing the body of a suspected COVID-19 victim into a grave during a burial at the special section of Pondok Ranggon cemetery which was opened to accommodate the surge in deaths during coronavirus outbreak in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Doctors and health workers entertain children at a COVID-19 care center functioning in an indoor stadium in New Delhi, India, Monday, July 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Father Vasily Gelevan wearing a biohazard suit and gloves to protect against the coronavirus, blesses Lyudmila Polyak, 86, suspected of having coronavirus at her apartment in Moscow, Russia, June 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Francisco Espana, 60, looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the "Hospital del Mar" in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Sept. 4, 2020. Francisco spent 52 days in the Intensive Care unit at the hospital due to coronavirus, but today he was allowed by his doctors to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of his recovery therapy. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A relative of Margodt Genevieve, who died due to Covid-19, grieves over her coffin during her funeral ceremony at the Montignies cemetery in Charleroi, Belgium, Wednesday, April 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

---

Text from AP News story, AP PHOTOS: A look at virus's impact as deaths near 1 million.

  

Follow AP News on Instagram