It's been two years to the day since the enforcement of lockdown changed the lives of everyone in the UK.
But while some are starting to see things return to normal, for those bereaved by Covid-19, life will never be the same again. Torn apart by tragedy, these families say they no longer have a 'normal' to go back to.
While all recognise that life has to move forward, speaking to ChronicleLive, some of those bereaved by the disease called for more to be done to ensure that their loved ones aren't forgotten. These are their stories.
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'Bubbly', 'caring' healthcare worker Becky Regan, from Blyth, Northumberland, caught the virus while pregnant with her fourth child. Becky, who worked at North Tyneside Hospital, died aged 29 in February last year just after the birth of baby Jasmine, the daughter who'll never know her mother.
Becky's mum Tracey Buckland moved up from London to care for Jasmine full time, while helping look after her other daughters, Connie, four, Stacey, nine, and Sophie, 10. For the grandmother, life has been "turned upside down", as she adjusts to life caring for four children while grieving for one.
Tracey said: "It seems like this pandemic, that brought the whole country to a standstill, is being treated like it never happened, like it's just gone. But we are still living with it.
"I have a baby and three girls dependent on me, my whole life has been chucked up in the air. And I look at Jasmine, this little girl who will never meet her mammy, and she's such a happy little baby but I know that one day I'm going to have to burst her bubble and tell her why she only has me.
"Covid has done that to this little girl. It's caused so much devastation to our family and now I hear every day 'it's nice to be back to normal' and I think 'I haven't got a normal anymore.' Becky died of Covid because she was one of the NHS heroes that you were all clapping for when life wasn't normal.
"That was her, and now she's gone and it's like it's being forgotten about, like it will only be remembered when it's taught as history in schools."
With the number of coronavirus patients now rising again on North East hospital wards, Tracey said it's also important people don't forget that the virus which claimed her daughter's life can still be a threat. This month, cases in many parts of the region have more than doubled as health chiefs warn of the "even more infective" BA.2 sub-variant.
Tracey said: "People do need to remember that Covid is still here, people are in hospital with it, people are dying of it."
It's close to two years since NHS nurse Rebecca Mack died aged just 29, after catching the virus just a few weeks into lockdown. Family, friends and former patients were devastated in April 2020 when the caring healthcare worker, who worked on the children's cancer ward at the Royal Victoria Infirmary before moving to NHS 111, died at home after calling for an ambulance.
'Selfless, fun and caring', Rebecca's 'aim in life was to help others', and that legacy lives on, with over £21,000 raised in her name for children's cancer charities. Now, a new JustGiving page has collected more than £1,500 for refugee charity Northumberland County of Sanctuary, and continues to accept donations in Rebecca's name.
Meanwhile, as the second year of life under the shadow of Covid-19 approaches, her mum Marion says she hopes her daughter's tragic story will remind people of the harm the virus can cause - and the need for vaccination to protect against it.
She said: "I would really urge people to get vaccinated because we've seen a lot of people who have been vaccinated and really aren't that ill with it, but there's still a hardcore of people who have decided that they really don't want to be vaccinated. We've suffered, and we know that people need to get on with their lives now and you can't live in a bubble, so vaccination is the answer."
The bereaved mum hit out at online misinformation pushing people away from the vital jab that might have saved her daughter.
She said: "It's a mixture of anger and sadness really. People have this conception that if you're fit and healthy then you won't get very ill, and very often that is the case but there are cases of very fit young people getting seriously ill and even dying.
"It does upset me, particularly when people get roped into these conspiracy theories on the internet. They'll say 'we don't know what's in this jab' but if you followed that logic you wouldn't eat anything, you'd never take a tablet.
"There's a lot of ignorance around so people need to screw their heads on properly and think it through, because I think we will get on top of the virus, it's going in the right direction and I know I feel safer now, but if you haven't had your vaccination then you need to.
"Rebecca didn't have that luxury. Being one of the first ones she just never had a chance, it's very upsetting."
Alison Brown died of Covid-19 in January 2021 at the age of 39. The London Cartoon Museum worker, who never lost her Geordie twang despite years down south, was "funny, canny and bright" and loved by many.
Her brother Mark said that as restrictions began to lift, it seemed many people wanted to stop talking and thinking about the virus all together. But, like Tracey, Mark said that after his heartbreaking loss, moving on is a very different prospect.
He said: "In some ways it feels like there's been two parallel experiences of the last two years of the pandemic. There's been people who have been relatively untouched in concrete ways, who've been upset at not being able to see people or go to the pub, and people like me.
"For me the prospect of returning to normal feels strange and sad because the one person I would love to be spending time with, the one person who would make me feel like things are going back to normal, is the one person I can never see again. For people who've lost someone, or found themselves disabled, whatever they're going back to isn't the same as when the pandemic started."
Mark called for a national conversation to bring together those with different experiences of the pandemic, to allow people to mourn and acknowledge the losses it has brought while finding ways to move forward. He added: "It's been hard, and not just for me, I think it's probably the case for the whole country, the whole world, that we need to reckon with what's been lost."
"Bubbly" and "full of life", Elaine Saddler was just days away from her 45th birthday when she died of Covid-19 at her Cramlington home in December 2020. For her brother Alan, it's been difficult to watch people, especially those in power, seeming not to take the disease that killed her seriously.
He said: "I thought about her when everything came out about the Downing Street parties - especially the one on December 18, which was the day that the police found my sister's body. I feel so angry about that - I've always been a Conservative supporter but now I wouldn't support them while Boris is still in charge.
"It has definitely been hard, and now they are saying that Covid is going up again, but you don't hear much about it. It's almost like it's been totally forgotten, and now nobody seems to care about wearing masks, people aren't bothered. People talk about getting Covid like 'oh, it'll be ok, it won't be that bad,' and I think, wait until they've got it and see how they feel then, because it's not good."
As we hit two years since the first lockdown was enforced, Alan said he does believe that life has to return to normal. But he urged people not to forget the scale of the human tragedy Covid has caused, and the lives, like his sister's, that have been lost.
He said: "I don't think people think about the figures like that, they hear 185,000 and they think 'it's not that bad,' but if you actually think about all those people, the biggest football stadium in the world wouldn't fit them, that's how many people have died."
