NY State Governor Cuomo: 10,000 Gallons of Hand Sanitizer for NYC Public Housing Communities

On April 20, Governor announced that 10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer and 500,000 cloth masks would be distributed to those living within NYC public housing. All as part of a move to enable the residents of such communities to avoid transmission of or infection from COVID-19.

As the Governor stated during his daily COVID-19 Press Conference, “Also, we have a need and responsibility to get the assistance we need to people in low income communities. We have—NYCHA is public housing in the city of New York, high concentration of people in one place. Many people in the small lobby, many people in elevators, many people in hallways, a higher number of people in the apartment, just a higher occupancy. That’s where the virus spreads. We are going to set up a test program in NYCHA, where we’re going to have on-site health services and testing in the New York City area, with New York City Housing Authority projects, working with local officials. We’re doing it as a pilot program to see how it works. If it works well, we will go further with it. We have as you see Congressman Meeks, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Attorney General Letitia James, Speaker Carl Heastie, and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz who will be working on this and coordinating it, and I thank them very much. We’re also going to bring 500,000 cloth masks to NYCHA. That is one mask for every person who is in public housing, and hand sanitizer, etcetera. Just so they have the necessary equipment they need to do the social-distancing and protection.”

It all follows is announcement of March 9 in which he stated that the state would be producing 100,000 gallons of hand sanitizer every week for distribution to the hardest hit counties and areas of the state.

Since that time we kept a lookout for additional details regarding what had happened with all the supposed sanitizer to be manufactured. We were pleased to finally hear the Governor’s follow-up on April 8. On that day he mentioned how over one million bottles of NYS hand sanitizer was delivered across 62 counties in the state. The recipients within these areas were emergency managers, first responders, health care workers, nursing homes, law enforcement, homeless organizations and other non-profits, transportation systems including the MTA, Port Authority, Thruway and other public transportation entities across the state.