Wednesday’s Jersey City City Council Meeting sputtered onto the internet in a live broadcast in response to the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the globe and infected 222 Jersey City residents as of March 27.

Today, those rooms are silent. The global health crisis has emptied out the galleries and closed the doors of our creative spaces. Most of the arts institutions in Jersey City work on thin margins. Even in good times, it’s difficult to keep galleries solvent. Frozen in place and with few ways to act, local curators face an unprecedented challenge.

As a result, many groups are redirecting their pitches online and to social media. ACNJ has posted a YouTube video that provides salient information about the census and includes a pitch the group had planned to make at in-person trainings: “It’s really important that you know that you can help make sure New Jersey has a complete count in 2020.” The city of Paterson, which has had one of the more robust census promotional efforts in the state, is encouraging people to take a CensusSelfie and upload it to their website.

The first Jersey City testing site is in the eastern side of the city is walk-up testing site with an expedited process out of the Public Safety Headquarters building located at 465 Marin Boulevard. 

Critical to the state’s response are the four temporary “field hospitals” being planned by U.S. Army officials, the first of which Murphy said would be open within a week at the Meadowlands convention center in Secaucus. Three other units will follow within roughly a month, he added, with two located at the massive convention complex in Edison and another at the Atlantic City Convention Center. Each will have roughly 250 beds.