During normal times, Joe Ruggiero Jr. might hold 25 funerals a month; this April there have been 71. Due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, his family’s funeral home in East Boston is so overrun that the tribute lounge and cafe normally used to display portraits of the departed has been turned into a makeshift storage space. A thin white sheet of plastic...

Patrick Lupien and Mariah LeMieux-Lupien knew they were going to be evicted from their apartment in Biddeford, Maine. The lapse was a matter of basic math: As Mariah put it, when you don’t have it, you don’t have it. Despite Patrick’s $40,000 a year salary, the Lupien family became part of an often invisible group known as the “working homeless.” Their...

Jessica Rinaldi documented a Cataldo ambulance crew as they worked their 24-hour shift. Monday, 9:23 a.m. EMT Emily Moran of Melrose and paramedic Ricky Cormio of Medford lifted an elderly patient who had a fever, a possible sign of COVID-19, onto a stretcher for transport to Mass General Hospital, their second call of the day. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe...

Here’s a look at some of the best images taken by Globe photographers last month before the coronavirus grabbed the region’s attention: the end of Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, L Street ice swimmers practicing at Dorchester Bay, soap box derby racing, the Boston Flower & Garden Show, and the MIAA high school winter sports playoffs....

Globe staff photographers document the Boston area and beyond during this unprecented time. The gallery is updated weekly throughout the crisis. Friends and family drove by Gavin Brennan’s house to wish Gavin a happy birthday on April 30 in Dedham. Gavin was among the first pediatric cancer patients in the nation to test positive for COVID-19 while...

In waters cold enough to kill, 93 competitors, who had to prove they could handle ultra-cold water to qualify, race in distances ranging from 25 to 200 meters during the Memphremagog Winter Swim Festival, held annually in Newport, Vt. “You can’t imagine anything being this cold,” said Laurie Craigen, a first-time competitor. She was part of a large...