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COVID-19

Good news Thursday: Delivering pizza to healthcare workers, a special concert for New Orleans hospital

In Detroit, NYC, kindness comes one slice of pizza at a time

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In this April 7, 2020, handout photo, Japneet Singh, right, delivers pizza to health care workers at Kings County Hospital in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Singh estimates 1,000 pizzas were delivered to essential workers since the end of March. (Courtesy of the New York Sikh Council via AP)

Shalinder Singh and his family decided to continue sharing langar — a communal meal that is a tenant of the Sikh faith — during the pandemic by bringing pizzas to health care workers in their community.

“It just popped up in my mind, this is the time to take care of the heroes in the front,” Singh told the Associated Press. “I spoke to a couple of doctors and they said pizza is the best because they’re working 12 to 16 hours and they don’t have time to sit and eat.”

BYU and other universities pledge to finish ProjectProtect

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The Mathews family from West Jordan, Utah, assembles clinical face masks for state health care workers who are providing relief to COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, April 21, 2020. Eden Mathews, far left, is a Relief Society president for her Latter-day Saint congregation and organized the distribution of more than 1,000 clinical face masks to fellow congregants who also volunteered to participate in the Project Protect initiative. (Church Newsroom)

Project Protect was launched on April 17 to help health care workers have access to clinical face masks. Members of the community have stepped up to help sew these masks, and now local universities including BYU are joining the initiative as well.

'We are grateful to be a part of this important project,' BYU President Kevin J Worthen said in a press release. 'We recognize that many of our alumni and members of our campus community have already contributed to this project, spending countless hours sewing masks. We are extremely thankful for the work they have done and hope that some of them and others may be able to sew additional masks — this time with blue thread.'

Donation brings a bit of Mardi Gras to hospital workers

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Healthcare workers at New Orleans East Hospital wave handkerchiefs and dance to a jazz serenade, as a tribute for their care for COVID-19 patients, by the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, outside the hospital in New Orleans, Friday, May 15, 2020. A New York woman collaborated with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra to put on what she calls a stimulus serenade to give moral support to front-line hospital workers and COVID-19 patients in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

When Emily Bauman received her stimulus check, she decided to put the money to good use by funding a special musical performance for healthcare workers in New Orleans. Her donation had two benefits: lifting the workers' spirits and sending the performers a much needed paycheck.

“This was fantastic therapy for us and our staff,” Takeisha Charles Davis, a doctor at the hospital, told the Associated Press. “The last 8½ weeks have been tremendously stressful.”

Priest draws squirt gun in fight against coronavirus

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In this Saturday, April 11, 2020 file photo, Rev. Timothy Pelc blesses Easter baskets outside St. Ambrose Church in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich. Pelc, wearing church vestments and protective gear, offered a prayer and sprayed holy water from a squirt gun instead of blessing baskets inside the church in a bid to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. (Natalie White via AP)

Churches across the country have been shut down for months due to the pandemic, and one Roman Catholic priest has come up with a creative way to serve his congregation.

The Rev. Tim Pelc used a spray gun to shoot holy water and bless parishoners' Easter baskets. Photos of Pelc and his water gun have gone viral and show the creative ways people are continuing to connect during the pandemic.