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Atrium Health, Progreso Hispano give away masks to Hispanic community

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For months, health officials have done targeted outreach in Hispanic neighborhoods to help bring down COVID-19 numbers.

In North Carolina, 42% of identified cases are in Hispanic people. It’s about 30% in Mecklenburg County, and 66% of those cases are in people younger than 40.

Atrium Health partnered with Progreso Hispano to give out dozens of packs of masks to small and medium Hispanic businesses in the Charlotte area.

“The smaller business are sometimes forgotten so this is who we’ve partnered with and this is who needs the face masks,” Progreso Hispano director Mark Herrera said.

The event is part of the two-million mask initiative that Atrium and Mecklenburg County started because of the statewide mandate. And Saturday, their focus was on the Hispanic Community.

“We reached to around 200 small and medium businesses. The grocery stores, the landscaping companies, the beauty salons,” he said.

Herrera said handing out 8,000 masks was just phase one of a three-phase approach.

“Phase two will be the businesses that we reached out to that cannot come today. That will be phase two where we go to the businesses and take them the masks,” Herrera said.

For phase three, they’ll set up at key locations throughout Charlotte where Latino businesses can pick up their masks.

Progreso Hispano is calling on other organizations to join in and help.

“I challenge the other organizations in the health care industry and I’m sure they’re doing their part as well, but those essential workers, I challenge them to do something like this. We’ll be more than happy to put that together,” Herrera said.

The organizer of the event told Channel 9′s Erin Edwards they’re hoping to set up another similar event in about 10 days.