While Andrew Cuomo marshals New York’s defense against the coronavirus, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has been working to equip metropolitan areas like Boston with the supplies needed for an effective COVID-19 response.

Baker asked the NFL New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft to use the Super Bowl team’s Boeing 757 to fetch more than a million N95 masks from China—and a second shipment of 500,000 more will be arriving next week.

Perhaps even more inspirational is that, in addition to Massachusetts benefitting, 300,000 masks were also picked up for delivery to New York.

(Such a feat might have been unbelievable if it were a Boston Red Socks plane instead of one belonging to the Patriots—when the NY Yankees are such fierce Boston baseball rivals.)

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As of this writing, Massachusetts has logged 11,000 cases of COVID in the state.

Gov. Baker described the endeavor in a tweet as “no days off,” and remarked that the masks would go to frontline health care workers.

For his part, Kraft said that getting the supplies on the plane and back to the states was “probably the most challenging operation our organization and team ever had to do,” according to CNN Thursday night.

Tonight's arrival of a major shipment of N95 masks on the @Patriots' plane was a significant step in our work to get front-line workers the equipment they need.



And its an example of how collaboration and partnership can lead to real solutions during these challenging times. pic.twitter.com/THwofdrTlt — Charlie Baker (@MassGovernor) April 3, 2020

“There was a lot of red tape, but a lot of people cooperated,” he said. “We had three governors. We had a counsel from China, our crew who flew probably more hours than they should have, but they knew how important it was. And, you know, it’s just — it’s like doing your job and never taking time off when something’s really important.”

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