Keeping Homeless People In Isolated Hotel Rooms Helped A Long Way

It has been proven numerous times that social distancing goes a long way in breaking the covid chain. Similar is the result when the city of Chicago in April 2020 arranged 200 rooms for the homeless people. The rooms were provided to people who had severe health conditions due to covid and most of the people were over the age of 50.

Keeping Homeless People In Isolated Hotel Rooms Helped A Long Way

Most people either had AIDS or HIV or some had severe cases of diabetes as well. Dr. Elizabeth Tung from the University of Chicago who is the co-author of this study stated that they observed that people who were given the rooms were 2.5 times less likely to get more severe from covid and were starting to get better at a faster pace.

However, people who were still living in shelter homes due to homelessness did not show much improvement. 

Tung stated that providing a stable room and few good amenities can help a person overcome even the dangerous disease as well. In many people, hypertension and diabetes were also seen to be getting in control. People who were addicted to drugs or had mental health issues due to anxiety and stress were seen to be much better and were becoming an active part of society. 

Tung also mentioned in the report that rather than providing people with food and money if the government could make some affordable roofs over their heads they would have mental peace. Once this is achieved people can themselves take care of other needs. Many of the homeless people who were given hotel accommodation came out for help stating that they would get clean and would want to work for the betterment of themselves and society.

Dr. Thomas Huggett who is the co-author in the report stated that they saw fewer cases of covid from these people from thereafter. Many of the NGOs are also raising funds so that they can build affordable houses for homeless people. However, this would be fully possible only if the government helps them and puts in some of the federal funds so as to pace up the work.

With the onset of Omicron social distancing has been of utmost importance. In shelter homes, this is not possible as there is not much space and most of the people sleep together in a crowded room. This makes it easy for the virus to spread from one person to another. Julia Lynn who manages one of the shelter homes states that they feel sorry for the people however, even they don’t have the means to provide what is needed and have already raised a request with the government regarding the same.

Omicron is known to spread at a much faster pace as compared to delta and is also seen in people who are fully vaccinated. Thus, the government is now asking all the people to get their booster shots as quickly as possible as they are known to increase their immunity by 25 times. 

Another issue that has been observed in the report is that most of the homeless people are not aware that the vaccine is given out for free at hospitals. Many of them thought that they would need to pay for it and thus did not come forward. Biden administration has stated that they will be setting up more vaccination tents outside hospitals as well so that people are aware of it and can access it much easier. Currently, Omicron makes up about 4% of all the active cases in the country along the delta.