The coronavirus pandemic is raging across the globe.
But closer to home, New York state stands at the epicenter of this crisis with more than 67,174 confirmed cases. Even in the middle of such a crisis, one can still find stories of hope and courage, no more so than among the health workers who are battling the disease day and night.
This is why the Empire State Building has decided to honor these heroic efforts by flashing a red siren on the building every night.
Similar to an ambulance siren, the tower on top of the skyscraper will flash red. This hopes to symbolize the “heartbeat of America,” per the building’s Twitter post.
The flashing mast, a white color during normal times, will light up every night at 9 p.m. and will sync up to New York City’s anthem, “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys, which will simultaneously be played on Z100, the city’s radio station.
“The Empire State Building is an international symbol of dreams and struggles overcome,” Anthony E. Malkin, chairman, and CEO of the building’s owner, Empire State Realty Trust, told NBC News.
“Tonight, and every night in this struggle, she is a beacon to remind us we are all in this together, and we will come out of this together,” Malkin added.
The gesture is meant to honor the “heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight.”
In the skyscraper’s Twitter account, they wrote on the first night: “We will never stop shining for you.”
Earlier in the day on March 31, the United States Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort arrived in order to shore up efforts to battle the crisis.
According to the Navy, the ship is equipped with a 1,000-bed hospital facility, fully-equipped operating rooms, digital radiological services, a pharmacy, a medical laboratory, an optometry lab, a CAT-scan, and two oxygen-producing plants.
As it stands, the US has the most coronavirus cases in the world by a large margin.
Apart from social distancing, the CDC advises that careful hand washing, avoiding touching the face, moving away from people who are sneezing or coughing, and self-isolating when one is displaying symptoms of the illness, will help curb the spread of the virus.
Replaced!