A 20-foot-tall statue honors the frontline workers fighting Covid-19 around the world

Latvia is honoring the doctors, nurses and medical workers on the front lines in the fight against Covid-19 with a giant statue in the nation’s capital.

Artist Aigars Bikše unveiled the statue on Tuesday at a ceremony outside the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga.

The statue is almost 20 feet tall (6 meters) and shows a woman in a lab coat, mask and gloves stretching toward the sky. She’s wearing pink clogs and has a stethoscope around her neck.

Bikše told Reuters it took about three months to create and that he was inspired by seeing the heroic sacrifices health care workers were making to save their patients.

“I was watching the news, I was watching how medics met great difficulties in Italy, how they slept on hospital floors, how their faces were wounded due to wearing masks for long hours. I understood that I, as an artist, as a sculptor, should say something,” he said, according to Reuters’ translation.

People all over the world have been showing their appreciation for health care workers during the global pandemic.

In many cities, residents have come out for nightly celebrations on their balconies and doorsteps to cheer for hospital staff and other essential workers.

Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer statue was illuminated to look like a doctor on Easter Sunday in their honor and a face mask was projected onto it last month to encourage people to protect themselves from the virus.

Latvia, which borders Russia in Northern Europe, has reported 1,108 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 30 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Authorities in 214 countries and territories have reported about 8.4 million Covid‑19 cases and 450,000 deaths since the disease was first discovered in December.