On this month's cover is Pandemicon, a collage by New York City artist and clinical laboratory technologist Ansel Oommen. The piece-which depicts a SARS-CoV-2 virus as a globe-was created using biohazard labels that Oommen cut apart and reimagined on paper. He started making art pieces in this style in April as an outlet for coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Working in a laboratory at a large hospital, Oommen has performed countless SARS-CoV-2 tests on patient samples. He spent the earliest days of the pandemic alone in the laboratory-he'd volunteered to analyze nasal swabs and, out of caution, worked separately from his colleagues because so little was known about the virus at the time. It was during this ominous period that he became inspired to use biohazard symbols in his art. (Oommen's work was recently featured in the New York Times; visit https://nyti.ms/39t6SBB to see more of the pieces in his "Biohazard Collection.")
Each January, AJN publishes a "Year in Review" that highlights the major health care news stories of the previous year. This year, our annual review examines the pandemic-its origins, its spread, the responses it has generated, and the toll it has taken. See "2020: The Year of COVID-19" for a detailed timeline showing how this historic event has unfolded over the past 12 months.-Diane Szulecki, editor