COVID-19

Capturing the Changing Landscape of Austin’s Airport Boulevard

Photographer Dimitri Staszewski takes a look at the city's increasingly gentrified neighborhood.

by Dimitri Staszewski

Keep Reading

On the Coronavirus, Loss, and My Mom’s Tacos

by Obed Manuel

Portraits of the Pandemic: Part Two

by Texas Observer Staff

Editorial: Texas Wasn’t Prepared for the Statewide Vaccine Rush

My elderly parents’ experience getting the COVID-19 vaccine highlights problems with Texas’ overall pandemic response.

by David R. Brockman

Clockwise from top left: Casandra Gonzalez with Yolanda Reyes; Daniel Morales, an El Paso nurse who died in August, with family; Jessica Fajardo, an Odessa phlebotomist who died in April, with a friend; Pwar Gay, an Amarillo meat processing worker who died in May; Maurice Dotson; Margaret Ferguson, who worked for a roofing company in Allen and died in October.

Graveyard Shift

As COVID-19 devastates workers unable to stay home, families are left struggling for justice.

by Gus Bova

Illustration: A football player carrying a helmet walks through a ghostly, white-lit door.

Federal Regulators Have Fast-Tracked Review of Disinfectants That Claim to Kill COVID-19

How one Texas company with no previous experience in the industry has seized a pandemic-sized opportunity.

by Annabella Farmer

Chris Mabe, left, with her husband Jim, holding a photo of her 81-year-old mother, Jewel Bergan-Brumbaugh, who died this March.

For Families That Lost Loved Ones or Jobs to the Pandemic, Thanksgiving Carries an Extra Weight This Year

This year’s pandemic has brought untold suffering to families across Texas. Making things worse: At a time when they might take solace in the company of friends or family, public health authorities are urging them to stay apart.

by Trinady Joslin, Aria Jones, and Sami Sparber, The Texas Tribune

Selena Xie is a paramedic, intensive care nurse, and the president of the Austin EMS Association. She stands in full PPE at a medic station just east of Austin, in Travis County.

Eye on Texas: The Essential Women of Austin

A portrait series by Sarah Wilson explores how women deemed essential workers stay safe during the pandemic.

by Sarah Wilson

How We Got Here

Texas’ health system has been underfunded, understaffed, and unprepared for years. Here, COVID-19 found the perfect place to spread.

by Sophie Novack

A West Texas Nursing Home Sent Its COVID-Positive Residents Elsewhere. Now Two of Them Are Dead.

Texas allows nursing homes to voluntarily accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals and other nursing homes. But there are no additional safeguards for the people sent there, and some of the facilities have a history of breaking rules.

by Christopher Collins

Inmates return from lunch at the Bryan federal prison camp Thursday, April 1, 2004, in Bryan, Texas. The minimum security women's facility is where Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow, who pleaded guilty in January to a tax crime for helping her husband hide illicit income from one of his many shady deals, is likely to serve her time. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

I receive phone calls from distraught friends inside complaining of unbearable heat, uncontrollable outbreaks, and paltry diets.

by Jennifer Toon

5,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

ICE officials have released some medically vulnerable detainees, but one woman is struggling to get her sick husband out of ICE detention.

by Reynaldo Leaños Jr., Texas Public Radio

COVID-19

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