Key workers and survivors from four countries reveal the fear and uncertainty that has upended daily life – and how the past 12 months have changed their world
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Marcio Maranhão, 50
Thoracic surgeon, Parque dos Atletas field hospital
I’ve never experienced anything like this in 26 years as a doctor. I started working on the pandemic in March and at first we were overcome with perplexity. We had 45 days’ warning from Europe, where health systems were collapsing. Even so the severity and the speed of it all were just baffling. You’d see a patient one day, send them home, and the next day they’d come back in a very serious condition and die. We couldn’t understand what was causing such a catastrophic evolution.
