Organizations throughout the city have been chipping in and buying meals for front line medical workers dealing with the COVID-19 crisis in their facilities.
City hospitals have been overwhelmed by the many cases hitting New York City. There are currently more than 160,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 12,287 deaths. The state has nearly a quarter-million confirmed cases and 16,599 dead.
To ease that burden private foundations, charities and individuals are stepping up to help. In this case, NYU Langone was treated by Front-Line Food Trucks, created by the New York Food Truck Association, to contribute to the cause. The program is providing tens of thousands of free servings of coffee, nutritional snacks and meals every day for medical professionals at hospitals during the crisis.
Monday afternoon, medical professionals wearing masks and sometimes scrubs, waited on line for food at two trucks waiting on the East 34th Street driveway of the Kimmel Building. The two trucks – Neopolitan Expressway and Empire Barbeque – were serving hundreds of meals to hungry health care workers dealing with many suffering from COVID-19.
“It’s so nice of them to provide this food, you can’t find a place to get a bite to eat because everything is closed and we are working so many hours to help these people,” one nurse said. “Yes, it’s finally getting a bit easier, but still, we are so busy.”
Ariella Jailal of Neopolitan Express and Crolitta Mauri, an Italian representative of an Olive Oil company, said they were gratified to be able to help health care workers.
Jailal said they started with Samaritan’s Purse in Central Park and have moved on to NYU Langone giving out more than 500 pizzas a day. They are doing the food distribution in association with Central Kitchen, Neopolitan Express owner Max Crespo and Chef Jose Andres.
“They are all helping do this every single day to help health care workers,” she said.
The Front Line Food Trucks are now delivering food every day of the week to different medical facilities in the city.
The Front Line Food Trucks is assisted with donations from the public to supply the food for the trucks and providing jobs for those in the food trucks who would be otherwise unemployed. Anyone wishing to help can go to www.frontlinefoodtrucks.com
