How the Shepherds of Good Hope put the brakes on a COVID-19 outbreak - Ottawa Citizen
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For eight weeks, staff at the Shepherds of Good Hope watched and waited for the pandemic to arrive at their doorstep.
They knew it was coming.
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How the Shepherds of Good Hope put the brakes on a COVID-19 outbreak Back to video
The poor and the homeless are always visited by opportunistic crises: fentanyl, AIDS, crack, hepatitis. COVID-19, they understood, would be no different.
“We were preparing for the worst-case scenario,” says Deirdre Freiheit, president and CEO of the Shepherds.
COVID-19 walked in the door unannounced in early May and slept in one of the shelter’s units. One week later, on May 14, Ottawa Public Health told shelter officials that a client had tested positive for the respiratory virus.
Within days, five Shepherds’ clients had been diagnosed with COVID-19.
The city’s homeless are perfectly vulnerable to contagions — everything from the flu to gastrointestinal viruses. They live in close quarters and share bathrooms; they have little ability to physically distance; and many have pre-existing health conditions, such as diabetes, liver disease and chronic lung disease, which exacerbate their risk.
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