Coronavirus, refugees, Black Lives Matter: 2020 photos show world in distress

A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down as he walks past a burning building in Minneapolis during a protest over the death of George Floyd. Photo / AP

Behold, a world in distress:

A 64-year-old woman weeps, hugging her husband as he lay dying in the Covid-19 unit of a California hospital. A crowded refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, engulfed in flames, disgorges a string of migrants fleeing this hell on Earth. Rain-swept protesters, enraged by the death of George Floyd in police custody, rail against the system and the heavens.

This is the world that Associated Press photographers captured in 2020, a world beset by every sort of catastrophe - natural and unnatural disaster, violent and non-violent conflict.

And, in every corner of that world, the coronavirus.

There are the living: Women cover themselves head to toe with chadors, protective clothing and gas masks to prepare a body for burial in Iran. An octogenarian couple kiss through plastic in Spain.

Agustina Canamero, 81, and Pascual Perez, 84, hug and kiss through a plastic film screen to avoid contracting the coronavirus at a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain. Photo / AP

There are the dead: Relatives, traveling by night and by boat, travel down a Peruvian river to bring a body home for burial. Row upon row of new graves are dug in the largest cemetery in Latin America.

And there are those who negotiate the grim space between life and death - among them, 16 Italian doctors and nurses exhausted from their labours, their faces haunted and haunting.

Amid the pandemic it was sometimes easy to overlook the world's other turmoil - and its tragedies. A loving uncle carries his 11-year-old niece away from the devastation of a massive explosion in Beirut - her neck was broken, and her older sister died. In Syria, emergency workers pull the body of a boy killed in a government airstrike from the wreckage.

Wildfires gave the American West an eerie glow; a volcano eruption clouded the sky over Manila.

Across the United States, photographers documented an epic and bilious presidential campaign. An exultant Joe Biden, projected on a massive monitor under fireworks after he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. A dejected Donald Trump, after a sparsely attended rally in Oklahoma.

And perhaps the most appropriate image of 2020? It was captured during the waves of protests and riots in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. A protester strides past a burning building in Minneapolis; in his hands he holds the American flag.

The flag is upside down - the international signal of distress.

A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down as he walks past a burning building in Minneapolis during a protest over the death of George Floyd. Photo / AP

Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein leaves court in New York. Photo / AP

Migrants flee from the second fire in two days at the overcrowded Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Photo / AP

One-year-old Yazan has his oxygen mask removed after heart surgery at the Tajoura National Heart Centre in Tripoli, Libya. Photo / AP

A reveller dressed in a Spider-Man costume strikes a pose at the "Ceu na Terra" or Heaven on Earth street party in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo / AP

Rescue workers and local residents search for survivors in the wreckage of a plane that crashed with nearly 100 people onboard in a residential area of Karachi, Pakistan. Photo / AP

A woman wearing a mask to protect against infection from Covid-19 is reflected in a tinted chapel window, along with a metal casing said to contain the remains of St. Dimitrie of Basarabov. Photo / AP

Josefa Ribas, 86, who is bedridden and suffers from dementia, is attended to by nurse Laura Valdes during a home care visit in Barcelona, Spain. Photo / AP

Swarms of desert locusts fly into the air from crops in Katitika village in Kenya's Kitui county. Photo / AP

Sneakers and a Los Angeles Lakers jersey with the number 8 worn by NBA star Kobe Bryant hang at a memorial for Bryant in Los Angeles. Photo / AP

Cuban singer Cimafunk hugs a woman during a music conga through the streets of Cuba's Old Havana neighbourhood during the 35th Havana International Jazz Festival. Photo / AP

Protesters storm the San Francisco de Borja church, which belongs to the Carabineros, Chile's national police force. Photo / AP

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he stands outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House in Washington. Photo / AP

- AP