Saying 'Thank You' to Health Care Workers Takes Many Forms

Photos show innovative ways supporters are paying tribute around the world

by Andy Markowitz, AARP, April 10, 2020

A mural of doctors reading "We are ONE" and "Thank You heroes" is on display on a boarded up window in Gastown on April 09, 2020 in Vancouver, Canada. Gastown, normally a popular tourist area in Vancouver is quiet as all non-essential retail has been clos

AP Photo/LM Otero

En español | For weeks now, doctors, nurses, hospital staff and first responders around the world have been on battle footing, working long hours with limited supplies to treat those stricken with COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Waiting in lockdown for the pandemic to weaken, many of those behind the front lines have been putting their time and creativity into public expressions of gratitude. Here are some of the ways individuals and communities across the country and around the world are saying thanks to critical health care workers and first responders.

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Photos

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PHOTO BY: Braulio Jatar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

An 8-foot-high “Thank you” adorns a fence near Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York. Artist Scott LoBaido has installed similar works outside hospitals in his home borough of Staten Island.
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/LM Otero

A mural near a hospital in Dallas evokes the iconic, World War II-era image of Rosie the Riveter to pay tribute to nurses working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
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PHOTO BY: John Gowdy

A masked medical worker cradles the world in a six-ton sand sculpture created by artists John Gowdy and Laura Cimador-Gowdy at their home in Galloway, New Jersey.
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/David Zalubowski

Brice Maiurro, Shelsea Ochoa, Anna Beazer and Kali Healf, from left, howl in Denver's Cheesman Park on April 8, one of many rituals that have emerged across the country as Americans take a moment each night to thank essential workers.
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PHOTO BY: Gotham/Getty Images

A masked artist chalks a message of gratitude on the sidewalk outside of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Flushing, New York, on April 8.
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PHOTO BY: Mike Simons/Getty Images

Car headlights are reflected in a window at Bailey Medical Center in Owasso, Oklahoma, as medical staff wave to people who filled the parking lot and honked their horns to thank health care workers at an event on April 1.
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PHOTO BY: TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images

Red Cross volunteers pick tulips in a Rome park on April 8 for bouquets to be given to doctors, nurses, volunteers and hospitals battling the pandemic in Italy, one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19.
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PHOTO BY: Andrew Chin/Getty Images

Boarded-up shop windows have become a canvas for thanking health care workers in Vancouver, British Columbia's normally bustling Gastown neighborhood.
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PHOTO BY: Peter Byrne/PA Images/Getty Images

A teenager draws a rainbow and the logo of the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) on her house in Liverpool, England. Rainbows have become ubiquitous on British windows and walls as a tribute to NHS workers.
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Laurent Gillieron/Pool/Keystone

A Swiss army soldier waves next to a heart and the message “pour vous” (for you) he built out of flowers below a hospital building in Payerne, Switzerland.