Bank of America to give $100 million for coronavirus relief

Bank of America will donate $100 million to help communities hurt by the coronavirus, the bank said Tuesday.

The money will go to both local and national organizations, the bank said, to help increase medical capacity, address food insecurity, and boost access to learning in the wake of school closures.

“We must all work together as one global community – public and private sectors, as well as individuals – to address this healthcare and humanitarian crisis,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a statement. On Sunday, he said on CBS’s ‘Face The Nation’, “This is a war. We’re in a war to contain this virus.”

The bank, like many others, has increased the number of employees who work from home, and beefed up the sanitation of its branches. Moynihan has said that the bank will defer bill payments for people affected by the pandemic.

It’s the latest in a string of donations that local firms have made to help communities deal with the effects of the coronavirus.

Monday, the Charlotte City Council and LendingTree announced that they were each donating $1 million to start a local virus relief fund. Tuesday morning, Truist, the Charlotte-based combination of BB&T and SunTrust, announced that it would donate $25 million. As of Tuesday, there were 11 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in Mecklenberg County.

This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 6:24 PM.