Healthcare Workers Lift Their Voices in Song With a Tribute to Colleagues Battling COVID-19

Healthcare workers risk their health—and potentially their lives—caring for their patients on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.

No one knows their struggles and challenges better than their colleagues, so perhaps there is no one better suited to pay tribute to them. So, that’s what employees at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center did for the colleagues.

Members of the hospital’s employee choir kept a safe social distance from each other by “gathering” online from 30 different locations to sing a cover of the Bruno Mars song “Count on Me,” the hospital said in a Facebook post.

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The uplifting result included 28 members of the hospital’s choir singing together in what looks like the increasingly familiar video conference call set up. The members of the employee choir, a fixture for more than 50 years of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, sang from what looked like their homes or quiet spaces at the hospital. The video also features photos of nurses, doctors, technicians, and more hard at work in the health care facility.

The choir didn’t record the song live, but instead, CBS News reports, that each of the choir members that participated in the performance used an instrumental version of the song and recorded their part individually. A pianist and a percussionist joined in the tribute, too, and then the recordings were mixed and edited together with the help of senior producer from the hospital’s video team.

The result is a pitch perfect musical collaboration, complete with a pianist, a percussionist, and the choir director leading it all from the corner of the video. The voices lifted in song delivered a unified message: You can count on me. It’s a heart-lifting tribute and a kind gesture to their fellow health care workers who are working hard to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus.

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