The coronavirus pandemic has brought huge changes to the way journalists work the world over, with safety a priority, access organised long in advance, travel kept to a minimum and hotels and public transport largely out of bounds.
So when London-based Hannah McKay travelled north to cover medical workers in Blackburn and Burnley, careful planning was essential. She divided the six-hour journey into two parts, sleeping in a tent in her parents’ garden in Coventry before setting off the next morning.
“I couldn’t go in the front door, I couldn’t go in the house and we couldn’t hug,” she recalled. Her mother cooked a curry for dinner and her parents sat on a bench in the garden while they ate, respecting social distancing rules.
She was offered the use of one of dozens of motorhomes in the hospital car park where doctors and nurses have been staying to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus which allowed her to carry on working the next day, this time in a maternity ward at Burnley General Hospital.
It was there that she took a photograph of a nurse passing a newborn baby to its mother that featured prominently in newspapers and on online news sites. “To get a picture I was pleased with was great,” McKay said. “I never expected it would get the kind of reaction it did.”
In Blackburn, McKay spent the day visiting as many hospital departments as possible, taking about 3,000 photographs in all. Much of the time was spent changing in and out of protective clothing, under the close surveillance of hospital staff. “I must have put on 20 masks throughout the day,” she said.
The following day she met a mother whose baby, Theo, who was born prematurely and was in an incubator. Her picture captured the moment when the tiny infant, in the hands of the nurse, stretched out its limbs while the mother prepared to take him.
The mother found McKay on Instagram and said the photograph meant that friends and family, who were unable to visit her in hospital because of the coronavirus, could now see how small Theo was.
“I’m going to send a copy to her for Theo’s memory box,” McKay said.
Reporting by Mike Collett-White, Reuters
