'Eyewitness to a Pandemic' docuseries captures how COVID-19 changed New York region

NEW YORK (WABC) -- It's the story that has upended life around the world, but the impact has been the greatest here, in the New York area. Eyewitness News will tell the story in the way that only New York's No. 1 News can in our new docuseries, "Eyewitness to a Pandemic."

Eyewitness News reporter Jim Dolan will explain how we got here, what we're doing to get through it and help chart what lies ahead as we reopen into a very uncertain new world, familiar yet full of risk.

Episodes 1 and 2 of the multipart series will debut Friday, June 5 exclusively on the ABC7NY apps on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV, and subsequent every week starting Friday, June 12. Just search "ABC7 New York" in the app stores.

Episode One: An Invisible Menace Looms

Jim Dolan begins our story at the end of last year, as hundreds of thousands pack into Times Square to ring in 2020. Unbeknownst to us, a health crisis that would make such a mass gathering illegal and deadly, transform daily life, kill tens of thousands of our neighbors and cripple the economy was already forming in China.

Jim looks at the initial reports in the US, including the early stories on Eyewitness News. We look at the public voices on this crisis, and who saw it coming, and who dismissed it. We examine the flare-ups out west, the ghosting of Chinatown, a foreshadowing of what was to come for the region at large.

Episode Two: An Impending Nightmare

The sense of doom grew, especially after March 1, when the first confirmed case arrived in Manhattan. Soon, there was a hotspot in New Rochelle, and small curfews and containment zones across the area offered a hint of a frightening future we still thought we could avoid.

New York was on the verge of being placed "on pause" in an audacious last-ditch effort to save lives and "flatten the curve," a term most of us had never heard before, but that all of us would soon be part of carrying out.

"The days ahead would be nothing like the days that preceded them and they would move at breakneck speed as the virus and the victims it claimed would soon overwhelm the health care system, the government response, and the mighty worlds of business and finance. Lives would be changed forever and so many lives would be lost. But there are stories too of heroism and sacrifice... Of public service and pitching in. Eyewitness News was there for every step."

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