ALBANY COUNTY — “In 1887 — here’s a quick little history lesson — in Denver, Colorado, a woman, a rabbi, a priest, and two ministers joined together to launch the first United Way campaign,” said Peter Gannon, president and chief executive officer of United Way of the Greater Capital Region, at Saturday morning’s county press briefing.

Two imams on Saturday joined in that spirit of community giving when they presented a $20,000 check, raised from area mosques, to United Way to help those in need because of the pandemic.

“The reason we are here is we would like to show our support and our appreciation for the people who are doing the right work at the right time,” said Imam Djafer Sebkhaoui of Al-Hidaya Center. He noted all of humanity is facing the pandemic and said the check was just a token of appreciation for the work being done.

“Thank you very much, our elected officials — you are the front line. This is a very difficult time … We are all in together,” said Imam Abdul-Rahman Yaki of the Islamic Center of the Capital District.

He noted that mosques were closed now to prevent the spread of the virus but hoped they would be able to open with Ramadam coming soon. “There will be no religion if we are all dead,” he said. “We have to have life to practice our faiths.” 

He concluded, “We appreciate our diversity here in New York, here in Albany County … Let us know how we can actually do better.”

“We talk a lot at United Way about how people in our community are one bad day away from being in serious financial straits but no one really anticipated this collective bad day we all go through together,” said Gannon. “But we are getting through it.”

So far, United Way has raised nearly $600,000 to deal with the coronavirus crisis, Gannon said. “In a unique twist for us, we’ve already deployed $300,000 of that to the front lines,” he said, noting money had gone to such organizations as food pantries and tenant associations “to help people dealing with the most severe fallout from this crisis.”

He also said that, since the highest volume of cases was in Albany County, the most funds had been directed here.

Gannon went on, “I’m encouraged by the generosity of the Islamic community here in Albany County. We still need more people to join us … The simplest way to do that — and it doesn’t matter if you have $5 or $5,000 … [is to] text COVID19 to 41444.”

Gannon also recalled being at the county press briefing a month ago with “folks still talking about this being an overreaction. “Your leadership through this crisis has saved a lot of lives,” Gannon told County Executive Daniel McCoy.

On Saturday, McCoy announced that Albany County now has 424 confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 with 498 people under mandatory quarantine and 66 under precautionary quarantine.

Thirty-six county residents are hospitalized with COVID-19 with 14 of them in intensive-care units. The percentage of people hospitalized after testing positive for the disease is just over 8.49, McCoy said.

“Social distancing is working,” he said, noting that about 5,000 county residents have been tested so far.

McCoy noted that the county has about 320,000 residents and said, “If things weren’t shut down and you weren’t home, we’d probably have well over 30,000 people infected by the coronavirus.”