City increases efforts to stop COVID outbreaks among homeless people
About 400 homeless people in Montreal and 200 people who work within the community have received the COVID-19 vaccination so far, the city's public health department says.
The effort, announced last week, is a response to a concerning number of cases among the population since the beginning of December. As of Friday, the city reported that a cumulative total of 192 cases have been detected among homeless people and 82 among staff.
“We have massive action plans to control the situation; we're doing screening in different community organizations and shelters,” public health director Dr. Mylène Drouin said on Friday.
Drouin said 13 environments involving the homeless have had outbreaks so far, including such places as shelters, warming centres and community organizations. Eight of them are currently dealing with active cases.
“The issue and complexity with the management of these outbreaks is obviously the mobility of the people,” Drouin said. “If they're in a shelter one night, they could be in a day centre during the day, a warming centre, so we have a lot of mobility.”
Another challenge in controlling COVID-19 among the homeless population is that public health guidelines like physical distancing or the wearing of personal protective equipment are hard to enforce, notably in tight quarters where they may sleep, Drouin said.
“All those factors make it difficult to control the transmission, to stop the transmission, of the virus,” Drouin said.
This week, the city announced it's in the process of adding 250 beds in makeshift emergency shelters in the coming days, one at the Centre Pierre-charbonneau near the Olympic Stadium and another at the Stade de soccer de Montréal on Papineau Ave. in the St-michel area.
The shelter at the soccer stadium will be a red zone, staffed by Red Cross teams, where homeless people will be able to isolate while recovering from COVID -19.
“We have to continue to test, test, test — to test, to isolate, to break the chain of transmission. We're vaccinating, we're ensuring to have a secure trajectory so these people can isolate themselves and avoid contaminating others,” Drouin said.
We have to continue to test, test, test — to test, to isolate, to break the chain of transmission.
The city's action plan also involves assisting shelters that are dealing with outbreaks as well as those that aren't in an effort to prevent them from happening. Drouin said the public health department provided the Open Door shelter, recently closed due to an outbreak, with recommendations that will allow it to reopen safely.
The unexpected closure of the Open Door led to the death of an Innu man named Raphaël André, who regularly frequented the shelter but found himself locked out in the cold on Saturday.
“I just want to say a word to say how we are touched and affected by the sudden death of Raphaël André,” Drouin said. “We want to — I want, personally — to give my condolences and my sympathies to friends, family and community groups who work with the Innu community in Montreal.”