BY KEVIN DUGGAN
City manufacturers will
ramp up production of medical
protection equipment at two
Brooklyn business parks in the
coming weeks, Mayor Bill de
Blasio announced on April 14.
Hizzoner said that work at
the Brooklyn business hubs
and in other boroughs would be
“supercharged” for more than a
dozen companies in an effort to
produce hundreds of thousands
of medical face shields, gowns,
and COVID-19 testing kits —
necessary supplies that the federal
government has dropped
the ball on providing, de Blasio
said.
“Our efforts to get them
from Washington, DC — no
result,” the mayor said at his
daily briefi ng.
The Economic Development
Corporation, the city’s
business boosting arm, has recruited
eight companies to produce
the plastic facial guards
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the
Brooklyn Army Terminal, and
on the distant isle of Manhattan
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— up from the three fi rms
that started making them at the
Fort Greene business park last
month.
This will boost production
of the shields from about
120,000 per week to 465,000
weekly by April 24 with a goal
of 620,000 every week, which
would be enough to fulfi ll the
needs of city medical workers,
the mayor said.
Five companies in the Navy
Yard, Sunset Park, Manhattan,
and Queens will increase their
production of medical gowns,
amping up the current 30,000
weekly output to 100,000 by
April 24 with a goal of 250,000
per week, said de Blasio.
One maker, Sunset Park
sewing nonprofi t Course of
Trade, will bring more than 400
seamstresses from the neighborhood
and nearby communities
to construct the gowns,
according to the EDC’s chief executive
offi cer James Patchett.
In the Navy Yard, tactical
gear manufacturer Crye Precision
and women’s fashion
designer Lafayette 148 started
sewing the gowns earlier in the
month.
De Blasio lauded the fi rms
for stepping up to produce this
essential equipment for the
fi rst time in the city’s recent
history.
“These are brand new production
lines, created from
scratch by companies here,
by New York City workers, in
an atmosphere of crisis and
they’ve surpassed any possible
expectation we could have and
we’re going farther,” he said.
The city is still in need of
more testing kits, which are
crucial to testing more people
and moving toward a low-level
of infection rates from the viral
respiratory illness, according
Workers making medical masks at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
to de Blasio.
“Over months now the place
we turned to for help — Washington,
DC, we never got a
straight answer, we never got a
consistent approach,” he said.
Indiana-based company
Aria Diagnostics will donate
50,000 test kits to the city and
offi cials will then buy the same
amount every week from the
Midwestern fi rm starting Monday,
April 20. This will provide
the city with a reliable source of
the kits for the fi rst time since
the pandemic started, according
to the mayor.
De Blasio also wants to
launch the city’s own production
of the kits, with university
and commercial labs producing
the testing solution, while
asking manufacturers and 3D
printers to make the swabs and
storage tubes, starting some
time in May.
The mayor also called on
more companies citywide to
help out by emailing testhelp@
edc.nyc.
Arts and masks
City ups Brooklyn medical equipment
manufacturing, buys COVID-19 testing kits
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Making Sense of the Census
By Julie Menin, Director of NYC Census
2020 and Bitta Mostofi, Commissioner of the
Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs
The census is for everyone, and this
Immigrant Heritage Week, we’re launching
a new way for immigrant communities
to learn about it! This week, NYC
Census 2020 and the Mayor’s Office of
Immigrant Affairs launched two new We
Speak NYC educational videos, in partnership
with the City University of New
York, to explain the importance of participating
in the census.
In a city with more than 200 languages
spoken, and where nearly half of our 3.1
million immigrant New Yorkers have
limited English proficiency, We Speak
NYC, NYC’s English language learning
program, is a key resource for New Yorkers
to learn about city services, practice
their English conversation skills, and
build community. So while New Yorkers
are gaining new language skills, it’s also
a great opportunity to get the facts about
the 2020 Census in one fell swoop.
The new videos emphasize that
the census is for everyone and that it’s
safe, easy, and vitally important to our
communities. The more of us who are
counted, the more money and resources
our communities receive to provide for
us. And importantly, they also highlight
that there is no immigration or citizenship
question on the census and that responses
are completely confidential.
This new partnership also comes at
a crucial time. Immigrant communities
have been gravely impacted by COVID-19,
but they are also at a high risk of going
undercounted. Our hospitals, healthcare,
emergency services, and other
public services all depend on the census
for funding and resources — a complete
count could not be more critical for our
communities’ health and future.
Fortunately, this new partnership
can help close that gap by speaking directly
to immigrant communities and
helping to combat the fear and misinformation
around the 2020 Census. And
most importantly, these videos will give
viewers both the facts and the language
they need to support a complete count in
their own communities.
Remember, the census is about all of
us, and the only way we can make sure
our city gets what we deserve is by helping
to get our families, friends, and neighbors
counted. Do your part and let’s make
it count!
Fill out the census now at my2020census.
gov.
We
Speak
Census
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