BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — This weekend, residents in some parts of Boston will start to hear COVID-19 information being broadcast on loudspeakers mounted on trucks.
At a press conference Friday afternoon, Mayor Marty Walsh said the "sound trucks" are part of the city's "new tactics" to get the message out about coronavirus prevention in the hardest hit places.
"We're going to keep getting the stay-at-home message out every single way we can," Walsh said. "Targeting the places where data shows us more outreach is needed... This weekend... we're sending out seven sound trucks. These city-truck mounted speakers will be driving through the neighborhoods where the cases are the highest."
Walsh said the trucks will be broadcasting information in seven different languages "depending on the community." The messages will be in English, Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Vietnamese, Arabic, Somali, and Cape Verdean Creole.
"You'll hear them in Hyde Park, Mattapan, Dorchester, East Boston, and Roxbury," said Walsh.
The city already has nearly 200 print and digital billboards, every home in Boston has had literature on the virus delivered in multiple languages, and the administration is also calling close to 80,000 seniors twice a week with a message in six different languages.
Walsh also said there have been 1,245 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in Massachusetts so far, 122 of those deaths were in Boston.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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