In the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic, New Scientist published almost two dozen editions with reports about the virus and related matters on the cover – an unprecedented run in our nearly 70-year history. They tell a story about our evolving understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, beginning with our 8 February 2020 magazine (above), when it was still known only as “the novel coronavirus”.
Just a month later, we went with a bold declaration: this was now a global pandemic. It wasn’t an easy decision, given the World Health Organization wasn’t yet ready to use the word, but the strength of our reporting and the need to inform readers meant we felt we had to. A week later, the WHO finally took the same line.
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Even so, it was still unthinkable then that the virus would claim a million lives, a brutal toll that was flagged up on the front of our 19 September 2020 edition. The design of this was a deliberate reference to our earlier pandemic issue, a testament to the scale of the loss in such a short time span.
Likenesses of the virus, with its infamous surface spike proteins that put the word “corona” (Latin for crown) in “coronavirus”, became emblematic. We examined its lingering impact with our special on long covid on 31 October 2020 and our “Generation covid” cover on 18 September 2021.
For me, looking back at these dredges up a strange mix of emotions, from fear to pain to disbelief at what we all lived through. But I am also proud that the team at New Scientist was able to bring readers the information they needed, and hopefully some light in dark times.
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