Revere, Mass., recently launched a new COVID-19 safety and awareness campaign prominently featuring the stories of community members who have survived the disease, the Boston Herald reported.
The town is one of the few in the state that is consistently categorized as high-risk for COVID-19 transmission, so Mayor Brian Arrigo rolled out a video series highlighting local survivors to try a "different way of communicating the importance of taking things seriously," he told the Boston Herald.
"They're a more powerful way to get the message across," Mr. Arrigo told the Boston Herald.
The video campaign focuses on four local survivors: Britney Sao, a 19-year-old whose entire immediate family recovered from COVID-19; Elayna O'Neil, a 66-year-old who underwent a 45-day hospital stay; Marvin Pena, a 35-year-old veteran and marathoner; and Sara Restrepo, a singer who visited the hospital three different times to be put on oxygen.
"COVID is a real thing and it's killed so many people," Ms. Sao said in the video campaign. "I'm not going to lose my dad because someone didn't want to mask up and stay home."
The videos are being disseminated on local cable channels and social media. In addition to airing the videos, Revere is also collaborating with the state to provide more free COVID-19 testing, enforce gathering restrictions more strictly and deploy multilingual ambassadors to educate neighborhoods about the disease.