Five years after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, registered nurse Nicole Baca still visits an infusion center every week to have a mixture of water and other nutrients injected into her bloodstream.

At Siena Hospital, Gevie Hall, a nurse manager, remembers those days all too well. The unit she managed, once a general medical floor, transformed overnight into an emergency COVID-19 ward.

This never-ending fight started in June of 2020 when she found herself becoming strangely confused during a shift in a COVID-19 unit at the San Diego hospital where she worked. These were the days ...