I hope you and your family are staying safe and healthy. This is a very uncertain time for New York and for the world, but I want to share a message of hope with you today.

First, I want to thank our health care workers, grocery store staff, teachers, transit and sanitation workers, and all those who are leading our city during this crisis. I want to thank every essential worker on the front lines of the fight against this pandemic . We owe you all an immense debt of gratitude.

I also want to give New Yorkers hope. As painful as this is, we will get through it.

We got through the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, through 9/11, and through Hurricane Sandy — and we did it together. It’s going to take all of us helping each other to beat this pandemic. But we will do it, because we are one New York.

The three most important things we can do right now are halting the transmission of the virus, building up our hospital capacity, and providing relief for an economy that has basically been shut down.

The first piece is something you can help with. Please stay home unless you need to go out for essential reasons, like getting groceries.

The rest is going to require a coordinated response at every level of government and industry across the country. We’re going to continue doing everything we can on the state and local level to help, but the federal government has to step up in a significant way.

We need a federally-coordinated response to get personal protective equipment in the hands of health care workers in New York and across the country. We need millions of N95 masks, millions of surgical masks, gloves, gowns, and face shields. And we need tens of thousands of ventilators so we don’t have to ration health care like other countries have been forced to do.

We need the president to invoke the Defense Production Act to get critical supplies in the hands of health care providers as quickly as possible. It’s insane that in the wealthiest country in the world, our heroes on the front lines do not have all the personal protective equipment they need.

As this pandemic continues to devastate our economy, we need Washington to provide immediate and substantial economic relief for people who are out of work and small businesses that cannot operate.

Impacted New Yorkers also shouldn't have to worry about making rent. We need to cancel rent here in New York for the next 90 days and take care of non-profit property owners and mom and pop landlords that can’t absorb losses.

Together, we are going to get through this. We need New Yorkers’ creativity, ingenuity, and compassion.

Stay safe and stay healthy,

— Corey

Corey Johnson
NYC Council Speaker

P.S. Our team is sharing crucial resources, important stories, and updates on our fight against the coronavirus pandemic on Twitter. You can follow me there for more >> [link removed]


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