Nurse Sandra Lindsay received the first national COVID vaccine at Queens’ Long Island Jewish Medical Center in December 2020. Other city workers, including teachers and food services employees, followed, giving a glimmer of hope as 2021 began.
The general public got access in the spring, leading to a brief early summer reconnection as vaccinated people dined and danced together. But the surging Delta and Omicron variants left the city grappling with a spike in infection as the year drew to a close.
Here are some photos photos documenting New Yorkers’ resolve in the second year of COVID:

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Eligible workers queued up on a frigid January day at the Washington Heights Armory to get their first jabs.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Yvonne Parson struggled in early 2021 to get information on the death of her father, James Hutcherson. Hutcherson, a resident of the New York State Veterans’ Home at St. Albans, passed away in April 2020 after being given an experimental COVID drug cocktail without her consent.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
SoHo’s The Hat Shop owner Linda Pagan worked with a coalition to support small businesses trying to stay afloat as the pandemic dragged on.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
A worker set out food at the Masbia pantry in Borough Park in February as many still struggled to feed their families.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Holocaust survivor Klara Budnyatsky received her second shot at the Wien House in Upper Manhattan.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Criminal justice reform advocates rallied outside Washington Height’s Edgecombe Correctional Facility, charging detainees weren’t being protected from COVID.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
Queens’ Corona was among the neighborhood hit hardest in the pandemic’s early days. Many residents and workers — among them Gabriela Almaraz — were still struggling to make ends meet well into 2021.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
A fleet of refrigerated trucks stored the bodies of COVID victims near the Brooklyn waterfront in Sunset Park.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
Couple Nunu Jefferson and Ashley Belcher took part in a program that placed homeless people in hotel rooms during the pandemic.

Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The private entrance to the Wall Street stop on the 2/3 lines was still shuttered even after 24-hour service resumed.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
A worker helped build an outdoor eating area along West 32nd Street in Manhattan’s Koreatown.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
A couple share a kiss at the Lincoln Center’s Revson Fountain.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
Tourists once again flocked to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after the museum reopened in May.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
New Yorkers took advantage of reopened indoor dining.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Relatives embraced before a graduation ceremony for seniors at the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management in the Lower East Side.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
PPE was left exposed to the elements outside the New York State Veterans’ Home at St. Albans in Queens.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Joseph Humphrey waited on a bus to be transported from the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side to a congregant shelter on the Bowery in Lower Manhattan after the city started moving homeless people out of hotels.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
Sae Feurtado and her husband Richard Kissi took advantage of the Marriage Bureau’s reopening to tie the knot.

Clifford Mitchel/ THE CITY
Nonnas Adelina Orazzo, center, and Yumi Komatsudaira, right, made fresh mozzarella with vendor Anthony Agostino ahead of Staten Island’s Enoteca Maria’s grand reopening.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Many children returned to in-class learning as city schools reopened in September.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY
An area around Queens Plaza still showed economic scars from the city’s protracted shutdown.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Deliveristas rallied at City Hall ahead of a City Council vote to improve their working conditions after a year-long movement protesting their treatment during the pandemic.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
An Inwood health care worker signed people in on Dyckman Street outside the only COVID testing site north of 181st Street.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Hundreds of FDNY members and other emergency responders packed onto the street outside Gracie Mansion to protest the vaccine mandate for city workers.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
New York resident Katie Mejias, foreground, embraced her sister, UK resident Rachel Wager, at JFK Airport after international COVID travel restrictions were lifted.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Workers set up a holiday display at Macy’s 34th Street flagship store.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Tourists and residents enjoyed the Rockefeller Center rink during the holiday season.

Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Huge “Vax Daddy” Ma, who helped countless New Yorkers get vaccine appointments through his TurboVax site, embraced Communitea owner Kafia Saxe in Long Island City while speaking about his plan to run for State Assembly.

Eileen Grench/THE CITY
As the holidays approached, New Yorkers were once again faced with long testing lines as the Omicron variant spread through the city, though so far with the high levels of hospitalizations as the pandemic’s early months.