2021 Notebook: The COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine rollout

By The Associated Press

The year started with a lot of promise. The world had a vaccine. And even as the planet reached 2 million dead by the middle of the month of January, people in hard-hit countries including the United States and Britain, began receiving the life-saving shots. But as the year progressed, a combination of lack of access and vaccine hesitancy yielded hotspots in places ranging from India to Ukraine to Missouri. New variants of the virus were born: beta, delta and, finally, omicron. AP journalists who covered the pandemic say the disinformation that was circulating made their job harder and the rising death count was gut-wrenching to cover.