‘Not running away’: Women fighting on Britain’s COVID front line

Women working at a hospital in northern England recount the battles they have faced during the coronavirus pandemic.

After a year that has shaken the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to its core, women working at a hospital in the East Lancashire NHS Trust in England’s northwest talk about what the coronavirus crisis has meant to them. At the end of each shift throughout the pandemic, consultant nurse Sheeba Philip knew she could take the virus home, where she was caring for her mother. But every day she donned her protective equipment and carried on, driven by a sense of duty like so many other women on the front line against COVID-19.