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Nanna Heitmann

A nurse wearing a hazmat suit holds a bouquet of flowers for at Moscow’s Hospital No. 52 on March 9, 2020—or Victory Day. Russia’s most important national holiday commemorates the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945. Although celebrations were more subdued because of the pandemic, the hospital arranged a small tribute for veterans and their families under treatment. Right:

A baby is born at the only maternity hospital in Dagestan, Russia. Located on the southernmost tip of Russia along the Caspian Sea, the Muslim-majority republic suffered a catastrophic surge of coronavirus deaths in the spring of 2020. The losses in Dagestan laid bare the Russian government’s attempts to obscure the pandemic’s true death toll.

THE LITTLE GESTURES 05.09, Moscow, Russia “It was shocking inside the hospitals,” said photographer Nanna Heitmann, who documented Moscow under lockdown. At Hospital Number 52, medical staff like this nurse handed out flowers to World War II veterans and other elderly patients to commemorate Victory Day in May. One doctor brought a guitar and serenaded the residents with old Soviet war songs.

COVID-19 TREATMENTS ARE GETTING BETTER 05.09, Moscow, Russia One of the most helpful therapies for COVID-19 is one of the simplest: turning patients, such as this intensive care patient in Moscow, onto their stomachs, which improves the lungs’ ability to get oxygen into the blood. Nearly a year into the pandemic, doctors are getting a handle on which medications and techniques best treat the disease. They’ve learned that the antiviral remdesivir shortens recovery time, while the steroid dexamethasone cuts the risk of death by a third in patients requiring ventilation.

Military planes fly over Moscow’s Red Square on Victory Day to commemorate Germany’s surrender in World War II. Due to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders, the commemoration was not well attended.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed people to adapt how they practice rituals. In Tver, Russia, mask-wearing worshippers congregate at a church to celebrate a modified Orthodox Easter, a significant religious holiday in the country. (From: Surreal scenes inside Russia’s battle against the pandemic)

Though early warnings about COVID-19 emphasized the risk to older people, the virus can be dangerous for the young people as well. Medical workers prepare to intubate a young man suffering from lung problems in the COVID-19 ward of Moscow’s Hospital No. 52.

Inside one of the churches of Tver, Russia, a centuries-old city on the banks of the Volga River, worshippers gather for overnight services celebrating Orthodox Easter, the country’s most important religious holiday. Easter is normally the occasion for outdoor processions and group singing, but this year’s services were cancelled in some places, and in others were modified by social distancing and mask orders.

Faithful, masked, and un-distanced, Orthodox worshippers gather for procession and prayer outside a church in Tver, two hours from Moscow. Russian Orthodox religious leaders feuded openly this spring over orders to follow pandemic safety measures, with some pastors arguing—as they have in the U.S. and elsewhere—that guided group worship must take precedence over quarantine orders.