While 2023 saw the closest thing to a “return to normalcy” since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, actual COVID numbers and hospitalizations were reported to be rising for the first few months of the year before dropping to unprecedented lows. With a drastic decrease in demand for on-site tests and vaccines, the South Peninsula COVID-19 testing and vaccine site closed its doors, giving way to at-home testing and treatment at the regular hospital facilities.
The pandemic didn’t end in 2022, but where it loomed large in January, by the end of the year COVID-19 had taken a back seat in many ways to the tumultuous events of 2022. Still, components of the pandemic: rises and falls in cases, reports of fatalities, transitions in public policy were newsworthy in most weeks of publication.