Digital archive: US Library of Congress gets health workers' audio Covid diaries

The Covid-19 digital archive will be housed in the library’s American Folklife Centre, which has been building up a collection of oral histories dating back to World War I. Photo: AFP

The Library of Congress has acquired a digital archive of the real-time impressions of more than 200 frontline health care workers documenting the country’s descent into the coronavirus pandemic.

Calvin Lambert, a fetal medicine fellow in a Bronx hospital, recalls how a Black pregnant woman who came in for a checkup "became irate and became scared" even when he attempted to give her a Covid-19 test. She thought the nasal swab itself would give her the virus.