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Shake Shack is among the restaurants and caterers donating large amounts of food to New York City hospitals fighting the coronavirus pandemic, under a new initiative to feed front-line workers.
Stacy Rotner, a corporate responsibility director at a law firm, said she decided to use her time in quarantine to launch the initiative, GratiFoodNYC, which so far has raised thousands of dollars.
“It is so important that we all try to help as much as we can during this challenging time in our city and country,” Rotner told Fox News about the reason for her new project.
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Rotner wrote on Facebook: “This week, we donated 500 meals across six different Emergency and ICU Departments at the following NYC Hospitals: The Mount Sinai Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian / Columbia University Medical Center, BELLEVUE HOSPITAL CENTER, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein-Jack D Weiler Hospital-Division of Montefiore Medical Center and FLUSHING HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER.”
“To date, we have donated nearly 800 meals,” she added, noting that Shake Shack was paying for a “significant” portion of each meal. “Let’s keep going! The goal is to donate another 3,000 meals to ER and ICU teams through the end of May.”
She said she had raised over $27,000 for the initiative.
The coronavirus death toll in New York dropped again, a sign that Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday meant the state was “on the other side of the plateau” and that ongoing social distancing practices were working to help stem the spread of the virus.
Cuomo said 507 people died on Saturday, down 43 from the previous day and by 271 since last Monday. Other indicators were going in the right direction, the governor said. Hospitalizations were down by more than 750, to 16,213, he added.
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But, Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, maintained their warnings that people in New York City and the rest of the state needed to stay vigilant to curb the spread of the virus.
“We showed that we can control the beast and when you close down, you can actually slow that infection rate, but this is only halftime,” Cuomo said Sunday at a briefing. “We still have to make sure that we keep that beast under control, we keep that infection rate down, we keep that hospitalization rate down as we all get very eager to get on with life and move on.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.