Five years later, NYC nowhere close to building COVID memorial: Its disgusting

New York City was the world’s epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, but five years and 46,000 deaths later a memorial to the victims and their caregivers is nowhere close to being realized.A City Council bill to study building a memorial on Hart Island — the Potter’s Field where thousands were buried during the peak of the pandemic – remains stalled a year after being introduced, and state legislation to fund memorials going up throughout the Empire State sits dormant in Senate and Assembly committees.“We passed the five-year mark [last week], and to still have nothing, and to learn of this [Council] bill that has been sitting there for a year with still no movement, it really is a testament to the way that the city feels about COVID,” said Jessica Alejandro, 27, who lost her grandfather Joseph Anthony Szalkiewicz to complications from the bug in March 2021.“Quite honestly, it is so disgusting and disheartening,” she added.“I think it’s really long overdue that New York City step up the way that other cities and states across the country have.”Both she and her sister, Danielle Alejandro, 25, spearheaded a “Yellow Heart Memorial” held in 2022 at Queens College where 123 yellow paper hearts were displayed to honor members of the college’s community lost during the pandemic.The only other Gotham tributes include the city’s Sanitation Department unveiling a Lower Manhattan sculpture in May 2021 titled “Forever Strongest” to honor agency workers who died from the virus, and a “COVID-19 Day of Remembrance” memorial in March 2021 during which photos of victims were projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge for a night.Dozens of grieving New York families also gathered in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, last week in front of a makeshift memorial wall featuring photos of nursing home residents who died during the pandemic.

They and eight NYC mayoral candidates marked the five-year anniversary of then-Gov.Andrew Cuomo’s controversial order to house C...