An element of the population among the most at risk of coronavirus: the homeless. A Bay City shelter just confirmed its first case.
“We have been doing a lot of work on the front lines with a hope that maybe we would avoid ever having this day happen… I think it was also probably inevitable,” relates Dan Streeter, CEO of Rescue Ministries of Mid-Michigan, the shelter’s parent organization.
Good Samaritan Rescue Mission – a Bay City homeless shelter – confirmed Thursday its first case of coronavirus in a worker who reportedly showed minimal symptoms toward the end of April.
“We believe right now it is fairly well contained,” says Streeter. “We’ll see over the next several days if this is just one isolated case.”
High-density living arrangements with tightly packed bunks, combined with underlying medical conditions and the lack of a stable address in which to recover have made the homeless and those who work in close quarters especially vulnerable to viruses like COVID-19.
“We’d already done some spacing but we’re trying to create even more spacing in the shelter,” explains Streeter. “One of the big pieces is getting additional testing now.”
In Grand Rapids, more than 50 shelter residents recently tested positive. The state health department told me it didn’t keep track of total infections among those experiencing homelessness – making it difficult to get a concrete statewide number. So what’s being done to protect some of the most vulnerable?
“Everybody [is] wearing masks,” relates Streeter. “We already had been doing multiple rounds of cleaning through the day of surfaces, but now… every hour.”
The CDC calls for a so called whole community approach – shelters working with partners to put together a response plan. Streeter tells ABC 12 he’s in close contact with a number of other shelters.
“A lot of things that we’re doing,” says Streeter. “The really neat thing is there’s no panic from the residents or the staff. Roll up our sleeves, we’re in this together.”
Good Samaritan is now in the process of tracing anyone who may have come into contact with the infected worker, which includes dozens of employees and residents within a brief window.
“Even though they’re not exhibiting signs or symptoms, there may be a lot more that have become infected,” explains Streeter. “We want to try to get out in front of this and keep it contained.”
The shelter has also temporarily stopped accepting new residents and will bus them instead to City Rescue Mission in Saginaw.