Persons who are homeless (over 600,000 at any time in the US) already face significant challenges, even before the impact of COVID-19. These challenges include being vulnerable to infections due to ill-health as well as social isolation and a lack of support network.
Homeless Shelters
The Impact of COVID-19 on Homeless Shelters
The typical provision of services to homeless persons relies on congregate settings for meals and sleeping arrangements, making it challenging to practice social distancing. Plus, most homeless persons face economic barriers to acquiring face masks and hand sanitation.
Homeless shelters face a greater risk of transmitting COVID-19 between their clients, staff, and volunteers. However, homeless shelters have decades of experience in preventing the spread of infectious diseases in collegiate settings.
Why COVID Testing is Necessary for Homeless Shelters
Although COVID-19 surveillance testing for homeless shelters is essential to reduce coronavirus transmission, a client doesn’t need to test negative before accessing the services unless there is an overriding state ruling on this matter.
A combination of screening and diagnostic testing for homeless shelters provides essential information on potential COVID-19 outbreaks.
Types of Screening and Surveillance Programs for Homeless Shelters
COVID-19 screening for homeless shelters is a way to identify potential cases amongst staff, volunteers, and clients. Screening tests in homeless shelters divide between investigating possible infection through identifying symptoms and random diagnostic testing to pick up asymptomatic individuals.
A screening test typically involves a temperature check and questionnaire form. These tests help in identifying symptomatic individuals who will need a follow-up diagnostic test to clarify if the individual has coronavirus.
A diagnostic test requires a sample for laboratory testing to confirm infection status. Services still need to be provided when awaiting COVID-19 test results all while simultaneously maintaining isolation from those potentially infected. COVID-19 screening and surveillance for homeless shelters identify carriers of COVID and assess the level of coronavirus in the homeless population.
Daily Screening Tests
Daily screening tests for staff and volunteers working at homeless shelters help prevent the infection of a vulnerable client group.
Daily Temperature and Symptom Checks
The recommended device for checking the temperature is a temporal thermometer that uses an infrared scanner to measure the temperature of the artery in the forehead. This thermometer is non-invasive and allows a distance between the person taking the temperature and the client. If the temperature reading is 100.4°F or greater, the individual has a fever. But a temperature check is insufficient, so it’s best to accompany the temperature check with a brief questionnaire:
A positive answer to any of these questions means they must be isolated from those without symptoms and arrange for a diagnostic test.
Pool and Pod Testing
Testing a group of people using a pooled sample enables you to cost-effectively clear a population as free from coronavirus. The make-up of the pool depends on operational processes, but potential pools are:
Pool testing is more affordable than testing individuals and is beneficial in picking up asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. The issue with pool testing clients in a homeless shelter is the transitory nature of the population.
Pool testing helps minimize costs in situations where you can treat the pool as one unit. For example, a cohort of clients kept in quarantine must all test negative before releasing them from quarantine or a family group.
Pool testing is helpful as a surveillance testing technique for establishing the level of asymptomatic coronavirus present.
Contact Tracing
If you identify an individual with symptoms of COVID-19, then you need to identify all close contacts of that individual for diagnostic testing. Close contact is someone who spends fifteen minutes within six feet of the individual over the course of 24 hours, and that contact may be a series of more minor encounters whose sum exceeds fifteen minutes.
Contact tracing for persons who experience homelessness tends to be location-based rather than interpersonal. The experience of homelessness means someone carrying coronavirus is unlikely to know who they spend time with but will know the routine of their day.
Benefits of an Ongoing Testing Program
In a homeless shelter, with a highly vulnerable population and people continuously coming and going, regular screening tests of the clients and staff on a weekly or more frequent basis are essential to finding asymptomatic cases or cases where individuals do not report symptoms.
Testing Guidance / Requirements for Emergency Services
The CDC guidance for testing in a homeless shelter depends on the rate of community transmission. At the highest community transmission rate, the guidance is to perform weekly testing on all staff and clients. Otherwise, it is recommended to use a combination of:
Homeless shelters require more diagnostic tests because vulnerable clients have a decreased ability to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection.
The precise testing regime depends on many factors, including:
What to Do if You Have an Outbreak
An outbreak class is two or more positive cases for COVID in a client, staff member, or volunteer. After positive test results, facility-wide diagnostic testing is considered best practice and weekly testing continues until fourteen days pass without a positive test result for coronavirus.
In addition, the health board may use location-based contact tracing to find potential sources of infection in the non-sheltered homeless community.
Which Program is Best for Your Homeless Shelter?
How Our Program Works for Homeless Shelters
The nature of a homeless shelter means you need to have all the supplies available for collecting a PCR test sample when you identify someone with symptoms or for mass screening. Nexsun Diagnostic Labs provides you with all the material and paperwork you need to take a successful test sample from clients, staff, and volunteers. When the samples reach our laboratory, we give you a rapid turnaround of results, so you don’t need to unnecessarily keep your clients in isolation.
We work with you to determine the testing frequency and volume, and we can step up the amount of testing during outbreaks or times of high risk.
Why Choose Nexsun as Your Diagnostic Laboratory?
When you run a homeless shelter, aiding society’s most vulnerable people, you have a lot of challenges to face, but testing for COVID-19 isn’t one of them. Nexsun will give you accurate, speedy results so you and your staff can keep delivering safe, effective services.
