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Caritas of Waco makes changes to prevent spread of coronavirus

The food pantry in Waco said it's making changes while the world fights the spread of COVID-19.
Credit: KCEN

WACO, Texas — On a normal day, a family in need would drive a cart and pick its food off the shelves at Caritas of Waco, a food pantry at 15th & Mary for low-income McLennan County families.

That's not currently a possibility.

Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, executive director Buddy Edwards said Caritas is pre-packaging food and not allowing more than 10 people in at a time. They're also sanitizing carts as soon as families are done using them.

This all comes as Caritas is seeing an uptick in the families they serve, which is normally about 125 per day. Edwards said they served about 150 Monday and 185 on Tuesday.

With about 90 percent of the food coming from the Central Texas Food Bank in Austin, the pantry said their food supply shouldn't be affected for a while.

"Everything that we are hearing from the food bank indicates that our basic supply of food is going to, at least for the short run, be available to us," Edwards said. "We do not know what the days and weeks to come might be, with respect to food supply."

Edwards said the pantry would accept donations of non-perishable food and money to aid them, should the pandemic last longer than expected. To help Caritas of Waco, click here.

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