Photos of people who died from Covid-19 are projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City as part of a memorial held on March 14. | Noam Galai/Getty Images

Survivor guilt during the pandemic may be pervasive, but it’s hard to detect, leaving many struggling in silence.

Lauren Nichols almost didn’t survive the Covid-19 pandemic. But it wasn’t the virus itself that nearly killed her. The 33-year-old’s struggle with severe symptoms after testing positive for the virus, combined with an overwhelming sense of guilt for still being alive while so many others were dying, nearly drove her to suicide at the end of last March.

“I had to stop myself [from suicide] multiple times,” she told Vox earlier this month. “The survivor’s guilt … I felt for being alive, for taking medical care away from someone else, definitely played