NEW YORK – Since the pandemic began in March, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has provided nearly 15 million masks for free to its employees and users of public transportation, it announced the agency on Sunday in a statement.
Among the masks delivered so far are some 4.9 million N95 and KN95 masks for frontline employees, 4.8 million surgical masks and 600,000 cloth. Train and bus users have received about 4.5 million masks for free, the MTA said.
The statement says that last week 100,000 masks were delivered to users on Tuesday and Thursday, among those 30,000 pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“The safety of our employees and customers continues to be a top priority, and the distribution of nearly 15 million masks is a perfect example of that,” said Patrick Warren, MTA’s director of safety. “The group of Mask Force he has done an incredible job of making sure that every person who logs into our system can get a mask, “he added.
For their part, wagons and buses are disinfected at least once a day, and stations are disinfected at least twice a day. Subway cars have been disinfected nearly 3.7 million times, buses nearly 700,000 times, LIRR cars nearly 190,000 times, and Metro-North cars more than 120,000 times, the MTA said.
On the other hand, the MTA is preparing to decide on extreme service cuts and layoffs after sounding the alarm for months of a deficit of billions of dollars caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our estimate, if we were to make the service cuts we outlined a couple of months ago, up to 50 percent on Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, up to 40 percent on the subway and buses, laying off about 8,000 people, “Foye told Steve Scott of WCBS 880.
– .
