The End of 2021: A Time for Hope

On January 9, 2020, the World Health Organization announced a mysterious coronavirusrelated pneumonia in Wuhan, China,1 and 12 days later, on January 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first coronavirus case in the United States.2 By March 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.3 People were encouraged to stay home, wash their hands frequently, wear masks in public, and stay socially distant- all in hopes of "flattening the curve." For many of us in health care, ORs started shutting down, staff members were deployed into other parts of the facility to assist colleagues with caring for the overabundance of patients, and there were shortages of medical supplies throughout the country. Because of the potential for additional waves of COVID-19 and the uncertainty of vaccine availability, the AORN Board of Directors voted to move the 2021 Global Surgical Conference & Expo from April 2021 to August 2021.5 Throughout 2020, pharmaceutical companies worked toward getting vaccines ready for the public, with the goal of bringing an end to the pandemic. First travel-related case of 2019 novel coronavirus detected in United States [news release].