Over the course of 2020, COVID-19 thrust the world into a severe global health crisis. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 put a tremendous strain on healthcare systems in low- and high-resource settings alike, as large numbers of patients with potentially life-threatening respiratory disease required specialised care.

With no effective treatments available and stocks of personal protective equipment and essential medical supplies rapidly depleting, healthcare systems threatened to collapse under the weight of the pandemic. By the end of the year, more than 82 million COVID-19 infections had been recorded globally, and an estimated 1.82 million people had died from COVID-19 related complications.

From March to December 2020, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) responded to the pandemic through our existing programmes and dedicated COVID-19 interventions in more than 300 projects in 70 countries. Our global COVID-19 activities focused on delivering medical care and other assistance to vulnerable people at risk of being left behind, including remote communities, people on the move, homeless people, and elderly people living in long-term care facilities.