The pandemic has persisted, and, so in the United States and around the globe, students are going to school in ways they never did before until this year — in their homes; outside; in classrooms wearing masks or not wearing masks, and sitting apart from each other or very close; and sometimes behind plexiglass barriers.

Some kids are in school a few hours or a few days a week and spend the rest of the time home, while others never go in, or go in five days a week. Teachers sometimes work from otherwise empty classrooms, giving remote lessons to students not allowed back in school buildings because of covid-19 rates.

The statistics are grim: There have been more than 43 million cases of covid-19 worldwide with more than 1.1 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, there have been more than 8.5 million cases of covid-19 — more than half a million in the last week — and more than 225,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fears of learning loss are high. Millions of children in the world’s poorest countries have not been back to school since the pandemic started and aren’t expected to ever return, especially girls. In the United States, concerns are highest for the neediest students, those who live in poverty, have special needs and are English Language Learners — but month after month of disrupted education will affect every child.

As coronavirus cases are rising in most U.S. states and many countries, educators are still trying to find ways to teach kids. Here are some pictures from around the world that show what school looks like in October 2020 in the grip of the worst pandemic in more than 100 years.

THE PHILIPPINES

A view of a facility where teachers conduct online tutorials with students in need of assistance through a hotline program, in Taguig City, south of Manila, on Oct. 12. Until a covid-19 vaccine is available, the Philippines has closed its classrooms and has imposed a model of remote learning to slow the spread of coronavirus.
INDIA
Students wearing protective face masks are seen inside a classroom of a government-run school after authorities ordered schools to reopen voluntarily for classes 9 to 12 in Gurugram, India, on Oct. 15.
GERMANY
Classroom windows of the Freiherr-vom-Stein secondary school in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Bonn, are opened for venting against the spread of covid-19 as school resumes with protective masks following the autumn holidays in Germany on Monday.
UNITED STATES
Students from Public School 11 take part in art and science classes at the High Line Park on Oct. 21 in New York. This fall, the High Line will serve as an outdoor classroom for four High Line partner schools, providing after school programming to a total of nearly 400 students from elementary through high school.
A kindergarten class socially distances while preparing to leave their classroom at Stark Elementary School on Oct. 21 in Stamford, Conn.
ALGERIA
Students sit in a classroom while wearing face masks due to the covid-19 pandemic on the first day of school following the resumption of classes in the Algerian capital, Algiers, on Oct. 21.
RUSSIA
A schoolteacher gives an online lesson for 10th-grade students in an empty classroom, in Moscow on Oct. 20. Rising covid-19 cases prompted Moscow officials to recommend the elderly quarantine at home and to order employers to have 30 percent of their staff work remotely.
A teacher wearing a face mask talks to fourth-grade students in a classroom in Moscow on Oct. 20.
ETHIOPIA
A teacher wearing a face mask conducts a lesson as students sit socially distanced in class at the Ethio Parents elementary and high school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday after schools reopened following a seven-month closure.
ARGENTINA
High school seniors attend classes at an improvised classroom in the yard of their school in Buenos Aires on Oct. 13 amid a lockdown against the spread of covid-19.  The city government allowed students in their last year of high school to attend face-to-face classes under a strict sanitary protocol and in the schools' open spaces.
BRAZIL
View of a classroom with protective shields on the tables and safety distance at Santa Maria school in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
TUNISIA
A public health worker disinfects a classroom in an effort to prevent the spread of covid-19 in Tunis, on Oct. 2.
JORDAN
Children on their way to their classroom at The United Nations Relief and Works Agency Nuzha Elementary Girls School, in Amman, Jordan, on Oct. 1.
TURKEY
Students wearing face masks attend computer lessons in a classroom at Atatürk Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Ankara, Turkey, on Oct. 8.
SPAIN
A teacher demonstrates a robot that takes the temperature of children and displays it on a screen in a kindergarten in Madrid on Sept. 4. Spain was the first country in Western Europe to have more than 1 million confirmed covid-19 infections as the country of 47 million inhabitants struggles to contain a resurgence of the coronavirus.
BELGIUM
A teacher conducts an online class in an empty classroom at a secondary school in Izel, Province of Luxembourg, Belgium, on Tuesday. Secondary schools were closed for 15 days in Belgium on Wednesday amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
ITALY
A teacher wears a face mask as students sit distanced from one another in a classroom at a school on the outskirts of Rome on Oct. 21.
A teacher in Brescia, Italy, gives an online lesson from inside of an empty classroom of the Abba-Ballini high school, an institute that complies with the new regulations for distance learning amid the covid-19 pandemic on Monday.
HUNGARY
A Hungarian soldier wearing a hazmat suit disinfects a classroom in an elementary school in Szolnok, Hungary, on Monday.
NORTH MACEDONIA
First-graders attend their first class in the garden of the primary school in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia, on Oct. 1. The government of North Macedonia reopened educational institutions to resume primary classes as part of a phased reopening of schools that were shut due to the coronavirus pandemic. Only the first-, second- and third-graders attend in-school classes, going in three shifts with no more than 20 pupils in the classroom.