How do I replace \(escape) with / in the path?

I would like to replace the (escape) of the specified path with / when the path was specified.
For example
C:\R\data\covid

C:/R/data/covid/
I would like to replace it like this.

I tried to replace the path with // using the gsub function as shown in the program below, but I got an error.

gsub("\\", "/", "C:\R\data\covid\")
Error: '\R' is an escape that is not recognized by the string in the string beginning with 'C:\R' 

Is there a way to replace the third variable without rewriting it?(I think the reason for the error is (escape) in the third variable, but I want to use the third variable as it is.)

Supplemental
The following programs have been verified to work:

gsub("\\", "/", "C:\\R\\data\\covid\\", fixed=TRUE)
[1] "C:/R/data/covid/"
gsub("\\\", "/", "C:\\R\\data\\covid\\")
[1] "C:/R/data/covid/"