(Observer Network News) On May 9, local time in the United States, the Pulitzer Prize, which is well-known in the press, announced the list of winners for 2022 on the official website. Among them, the "Close-up Photography Award" was awarded to Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave and the late Danish Siddiqui from Reuters for "reporting on the COVID-19 epidemic in India without losing a sense of proximity while revealing the disaster, giving a high sense of immersion".
Photographer covering India's COVID-19 pandemic wins Pulitzer Prize (screenshot from Reuters Twitter)
The photo report containing the winning photos was published on the Reuters website on May 4, 2021, with the headline "Harrowing photos from inside India's COVID nightmare". This set of photo stories consists of 59 photographs.
According to WHO statistics, at the time of the photo shoot and release, India was at the peak of the number of new confirmed cases and deaths of covid-19. Several photographers now traveled to cities such as New Delhi, Ghaziabad, Bangalore and Mumbai to document the devastation left by the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
India was at the peak of the outbreak during photo shoots (screenshot from WHO website)
At that time, due to the surge in the number of COVID-19 patients, the number of people who needed to stay in bed for treatment and oxygen was rapidly climbing. This has left hospitals in India overwhelmed, and many have been barricaded outside their doors. And those who are "lucky" enough to enter the hospital often have to squeeze into the same ward as many other patients.
Many patients in India are facing difficulties under the new crown epidemic (Source: Reuters)
The skyrocketing death toll has also exceeded the carrying capacity of crematoriums across India, and the government has had to build open-air crematoriums to "meet needs", a tragic scene.
The surge in the number of deaths has overwhelmed many crematoriums in India, and the government has had to build open-air crematoriums (Source: Reuters)
According to reports, since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the cumulative number of confirmed cases of new crown in India has exceeded 43 million. As of now, the cumulative number of deaths in India's official statistics is about 524,000. But WHO estimates that more than 4 million people have died in India due to COVID-19.
According to public information, the Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 according to the will of the newspaper magnate, the Hungarian-American Joseph Pulitzer, and 21 awards are awarded every year, of which 14 are press awards. The winners of the Press Awards can be of any nationality, but the winning entries must have been published in the United States, magazines, and news websites, and the winners are mostly outstanding journalists.
But there are exceptions, when last year the Pulitzer Prize Committee awarded a special prize to Darnella Frazier, an American girl who recorded "Floyd's death," when she made the winning video, when Fraser was a 17-year-old high school student.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.