David Lindstrom is 58 years old, homeless – and has COVID-19.
“It is not a fun trip. It makes you feel like you’ve been run over by a Mack truck, ”Lindstrom said of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the new coronavirus. “Your body aches. Just getting out of bed is like an effort to go to the bathroom. ”
But Lindstrom has a bed and bath, and is quarantined and cared for in a downtown Phoenix hotel thanks to the cooperation between Maricopa County and Circle the City, a nonprofit organization serving the indigent.
Across the country, cities and counties are grappling with how to cope with the spread of the CCP virus in the homeless, an especially vulnerable population. They are often unable to protect themselves with the simplest actions, such as washing their hands, health experts say, and they rarely have access to quality medical care.
Circle the City has 136 rooms at the Phoenix Inn available for the program, which was approved by the City Council on May 6. Lindstrom is one of more than 100 homeless people with COVID-19 who have benefited from the program so far, according to Michelle Smith, a registered nurse at the hotel.
How does it work
Once a homeless person tests positive for the virus, they can opt for quarantine at the hotel, where they have a private room with a double bed, a TV, a telephone and a bathroom. If they need fresh air, they can go out into an outdoor hallway.
A nurse checks patients twice a day, according to Smith, and the hotel is staffed overnight.
“I went through probably the toughest battle of my life,” said Thomas Salts, 53, of the virus he contracted after losing his car in an accident, which caused him to lose his job. “I was a little overwhelmed at first.”
Then they also put him in a room.
“Best of all, even when I was quarantined, I was in the room, they took great care of me,” Salts said. “They went beyond, beyond what another human being would do for someone. I couldn’t say enough thanks. ”
Patients receive three meals a day, provided by the non-profit organization Community Bridges Inc. (CBI), and the extra treats and drinks are just a phone call away.
Health professionals – be it a doctor, a nurse or a medical assistant – make the rounds once a day to “see if they need to prescribe any medications, if there are any serious concerns they need to know,” Smith said.
If a patient has a medical emergency, they are transported to the nearest emergency room. “We had someone with a drop in oxygen levels to an unsafe level that is one of the biggest problems with Covid, so we shipped them out right away” on a recent morning, Smith said.
A “coronavirus roller coaster”
Phoenix, with an estimated 7,419 people, is among the top 10 cities in the country in terms of the number of people on the streets, according to Statista, who used data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development of end of 2019. About 70 percent of the state’s total homeless people are in Maricopa County, according to data from the United States Inter-Agency Council for Homeless People and county point counts.
Some cities, including Phoenix, have opened hotel rooms to the most vulnerable: the elderly and people with underlying health problems. Caring for those who test positive is another challenge overall.
“It has been the coronavirus roller coaster, [como] Someone called him the other day, ”said Lisa Glow, executive director of Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS). “They can’t even imagine the challenges [que tenemos] like a massive haven. “
As the Phoenix Inn opened its doors to homeless patients, the number of COVID-19 cases in the city and state exploded. Arizona has more than 105,000 cases — almost 65,000 of them in Maricopa County. That’s more than 10 times the 9,945 cases I had two months ago and four times the 25,614 cases I had a month ago.
Maricopa County now ranks fourth nationally in county-confirmed cases as of July 7, behind Los Angeles, Cook and Queens counties, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“It is not an easy task to keep people safe from Covid,” said Glow. “I would say that we have probably had about 45 positives out of the thousands that we have been tending that have passed through the shelter. However, not all have been examined.
Patients residing at the Phoenix Inn are transported by Community Bridges from city shelters, or from the hospitals from which they have been discharged. At the CASS Adult Shelter for the Homeless, weekly blitz tests are done where all residents are screened, and any positive cases are sent to the Phoenix Inn to be isolated, Glow said.
For indigent people who test positive but prefer to stay on the street, Circle the City offers a “confinement tarp,” a bag containing a tent, two-week food, water, face masks and other hygiene supplies, Marty Hames said. , the community liaison for the nonprofit organization.
Circle the City also offers “goodness kits” to the homeless who live on the streets. These include face masks and other hygiene items.
As more and more people lose their jobs in the economic crisis that the pandemic has caused, the number of destitute people is destined to increase, social workers say.
“We are seeing people being evicted,” said Glow. “As people lose their jobs and are evicted, we are going to see more homeless people.”
CNN Wire and Epoch Times contributed to this report.
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