Advocates

said Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese.

Santa Clara County, Alameda County and San Francisco have begun removing handfuls of homeless residents with possible COVID-19 symptoms from shelters and, if they no longer need medical care, from hospitals, and isolating them in hotel rooms.

But it’s much harder to track cases among unsheltered residents, and Cortese worries about cases going unnoticed in encampments.

Outreach workers in Alameda County have similar concerns.

“It’s so critical that this information is getting out to the communities that are doing outreach in encampments right now,” said Talya Husbands-Hankin, an activist who works with the homeless in Oakland, “so we can both protect ourselves and actually make sure we are not furthering the spread of COVID-19 by exposing ourselves and then going from one encampment to another.”

The way Bay Area coronavirus cases are reported to the public varies from county to county. Santa Clara County has an online dashboard that breaks down cases by age group, gender and whether the patient had other chronic illnesses. It doesn’t say how many patients, if any, are homeless, nor does it specify what city or neighborhood they’re from.

Sonoma County has a similar dashboard that lists the number of cases per region within the county. Alameda County lists only the number of positive cases and the number of deaths.

Cortese said he’s been trying without success to get Santa Clara County health officials to report cases by census tract, arguing that more specifics will help residents better protect themselves.

In answer, he said, he’s heard concerns about protecting patient privacy, as well as worries that neighborhoods or populations affected by the coronavirus might be stigmatized.

But Cortese thinks information would help, not hurt.

“The more we get information out, the more tranquil the community is, the more satisfied our constituents are that things are under control,” he said. “The last things we want right now are conspiracy issues or suspicions or people having anxiety about whether or not we have this under control.”

Santa Clara and Alameda county officials did not respond to questions about the level of detail in their coronavirus reporting.

On March 16, Gov. Gavin Newsom reported that a homeless person from Santa Clara County had died of COVID-19, in what appears to be the region’s first — and so far only — reported homeless death. The next day, the county wouldn’t confirm the death or provide details.

But on Monday, a county representative issued an emailed statement saying staff had identified the encampment where the deceased patient spent time and screened 60 members of that community for symptoms.

Nine people who displayed symptoms were then tested for the coronavirus, and all test results were negative.

The county didn’t respond to questions about where the encampment was. Local outreach workers say they’re in the dark, too.

“I don’t know where that person died. I would like to know, to protect myself and my teams,” said Pastor Scott Wagers of CHAM Deliverance Ministry in San Jose.

Wagers and his team deliver food, clothing and coronavirus information to homeless encampments in the city. Many of the homeless people he meets there don’t know much about the virus or how to protect themselves, he said.

“All of their information is coming from the street, so they don’t know what to believe,” Wagers said.

Cortese said his office receives half a dozen calls a day from nonprofits and outreach workers like Wagers asking for information, including about which encampments to approach with caution because of possible infections. Cortese can’t tell them, because he doesn’t have those details himself.

“You run the risk of infecting the very people who are putting the time and effort in on a volunteer basis to reach these communities in the first place,” he said. “That would be devastating, to suddenly have the army of volunteers infected and in quarantine, and then nobody’s reaching out to the homeless.”