COVID-19 one year later: Americans continue to step up to address families' urgent needs

SAN DIEGO – One year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, people have stepped up to address the emotional needs of families reeling from the coronavirus and 2020’s record-breaking disasters.

In San Diego and Imperial counties and across the country, trained American Red Cross disaster mental health and spiritual care volunteers have had more than 53,000 conversations to provide emotional support to people in 2020 – which had the greatest number of billion-dollar disasters in a single year.

In addition, trained volunteers have provided free crisis counseling through...