Title
Authorizing the Committees on Finance and on Commerce & Economic Development to hold joint hearings regarding Philadelphia's safe, equitable, and robust economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Body
WHEREAS, The pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 has led to a wave of public health measures and private reactions that have caused untold and differentiated loss, death, illness, and hardship, including myriad economic difficulties, not least in the City of Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS, To avoid confusion with the unrelated SARS disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) refers to the strain of the virus known formally as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (or SARS-CoV-2) as COVID-19, which is the abbreviation for the name of the illness it causes, coronavirus disease 2019; and
WHEREAS, COVID-19 may cause most people infected with it mild to moderate respiratory illness that will recover without special treatment, some number will be asymptomatic yet contagious, but older people and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious (sometimes fatal) illness; and
WHEREAS, COVID-19 poses additional, indirect health risks by endangering uninfected people who cannot obtain medical care from overwhelmed health systems and those avoiding care to minimize their exposure; and
WHEREAS, The origin of COVID-19 has yet to be determined after first being detected in humans late last year, but the results of its spread are painfully clear, with millions of people worldwide infected, over 62,000 confirmed cases in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania alone, about a third of which have been in Philadelphia, causing no fewer than 1,000 deaths here since the first on March 25th, and shuttering social functions, family gatherings, artistic experiences, and economic activities, with a cascade of income deprivation in its wake, for families, businesses, a...
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