A divided nation will continue to struggle in beating back the coronavirus pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday in remarks to the Human Rights Campaign. 

Cuomo addressed the group, a leading LGBTQ rights organization, in a video address as social distancing protocols remain in place. 

The governor decried the national disunity amid a rise in hate crimes, tensions over long-standing racial inequality, and the sharp partisan divide.

Like a person sickened by the virus, the American "body politic" has been weakened as well, Cuomo said.

"It was weakened by division. We're more divided today as a country than we've been at any time since the Civil War. We've seen increasing racial tensions all across the country," Cuomo said. "We've seen more anti-Semitic attacks all across the country. We've seen the KKK march in Charlottesville, where they were so emboldened they didn't even wear hoods. We've seen children at the border put in cages. And we've seen increased tensions against the LGBTQ community. This division weakened the American body politic so that the virus could attack us. And we could not rally to defend ourselves."

Solutions to halting the spread of the virus have seeped into the political debate. Mask wearing, considered by public health experts to be a key way of preventing spread, has divided Americans. 

"To overcome this virus, we must restore our unity," Cuomo said. "The only way to stop the viral transmission, to beat community spread, is by forging community. The only way to protect yourself is by coming together and protecting one another. We needed to keep ourselves safe, but we could only keep ourselves safe if we also kept others safe, by wearing masks and socially distancing, and being smart one for another. The question is not to choose between I or we. It never is. The answer is always both. Only unity, only community works."