Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that the City will create and maintain a 90-day stockpile of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to ensure hospitals citywide are equipped to handle a potential resurgence of COVID-19. The City will also continue to surge PPE to nursing homes across the city, adding to the Administration’s existing efforts to support nursing homes fighting the COVID-19 crisis. New York City has sufficient PPE to get through the week for the first time since the beginning of the epidemic.
“We’ve been to hell and back, beating this virus back inch-by-inch every day,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “But now is not the time to let our guard down. We are planning for every possible scenario with COVID-19, ensuring our hospitals and frontline heroes will have the reinforcements they need to save lives.”
90-day PPE Stockpile
To create a 90-day reserve of PPE, the City will gradually add materials to a stockpile reserve once it has a total of 14 days on-hand. This will ensure that hospitals citywide are equipped to handle any potential resurgence of COVID-19.
Support Our Nursing Homes
The City has continued to surge supplies and support to its nursing homes, sending a total of ten million pieces of PPE in weekly distributions to all 169 nursing homes citywide. Every nursing home has received N95 masks, surgical masks, gowns, eye protection, and gloves.
This week, the City will send nursing homes:
- 1.93 million surgical masks
- 170,000 face shields
- 767,000 gloves
- 173,000 surgical gowns
- 15,000 coveralls and aprons
- 10,000 shoe coverings
Face coverings Distribution
New Yorkers should continue to wear face coverings to protect each other from COVID-19. Last week, the City began giving out free face coverings, and in total, the City plans to give out at least 7.5 million for free, including 5 million three-ply non-medical masks and 2.5 million cloth face coverings. These free resources will be distributed to New Yorkers at parks, NYCHA buildings, DOE grab-and-go Meal Hubs, via emergency food deliveries, the Staten Island Ferry and NYC Ferry, grocery stores, Mitchell-Lama buildings, via community groups, anywhere the City is doing social distancing enforcement and more.
Remote Learning Devices
So far, the Department of Education has delivered approximately 255,000 internet-enabled devices to students for remote learning. This is on top of the 175,000 devices the DOE distributed at the beginning of remote learning. Now, students with disabilities in religious and independent nonpublic schools can also request tablets. Families should call 311 or visit https://coronavirus.schools.nyc/RemoteLearningDevices to request a device.
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