COVID-19 outbreak hits Fredericton homeless shelter

Another homeless shelter in New Brunswick has been hit by a COVID-19 outbreak, and some advocates say they're concerned about what this winter might have in store for those who are unhoused.

The Marshall House in Fredericton had recorded eight cases of the disease as of Monday, said Gail Harding, spokesperson for the Department of Health, in an email.

Harding said the provincial rapid outbreak management team, known as PROMT, has been deployed to assist, adding that outbreak management efforts vary according to each facility's needs and the needs of the population.

"Efforts to reach those who experience housing insecurity are ongoing, taking into consideration the transient nature for individuals with precarious housing and the need to ensure this population has adequate access to vaccination," Harding said.

The John Howard Society, which runs the Marshall House, did not respond to an interview request.

The shelter opened earlier this year after the John Howard Society purchased the City Motel with the plan to turn it into a shelter with a combination of emergency beds, and supervised long-term units.

After the outbreak began, staff suspended taking in new residents, said Joan Kingston, chair of the Community Action Group on Homelessness.

She said infected residents who were staying in congregate rooms have also been moved to single rooms to isolate, she said.

"Marshall House now has opened up some of the units that they've been working on, and so some people are actually in their own units, which of course, makes it much easier to manage when people are no longer in a congregate setting per se, but have their own space to live in," Kingston said.

The outbreak comes after two shelters in the Moncton area faced outbreaks of COVID-19 earlier this fall.

Harvest House Moncton recorded 23 cases among its residents during an outbreak that spanned 31 days between mid-September and mid-October, said executive director Marc Belliveau.

House of Nazareth, Moncton's largest shelter, recorded 37 cases as of the end of October.

Concerns grow as winter approaches

As winter approaches and the weather gets colder, people in the homeless population will be spending more time indoors.

And with the more transmissible delta variant now the dominant COVID-19 strain, the risk of outbreaks will be heightened this year compared to last year, said Kingston, who's also a nurse.

"The reason it's different than it was last year is because the variant that we're dealing with is very transmissible," Kingston said. "Luckily, we've also been able to offer vaccination to a lot of people who are homeless or … vulnerably housed."

Harding said since April 2020, more than 35 vaccination clinics have been held for vulnerable populations in homeless shelters throughout the province.

Harvest House Atlantic's Moncton shelter tackled its COVID-19 outbreak and now has no active cases, Belliveau said.

However, the shelter is up to capacity, and increased measures related to testing and isolating cases have added an extra burden on clients and staff.

"This is potentially going to be our hardest winter to date, or at least we have seen in a long time," Belliveau said.

Rapid tests critical to combating outbreaks

Fredericton Homeless Shelters Inc.'s St. John House detected its first and only case on Nov. 17, after a rapid test done on one of its residents came back positive, said Warren Maddox, the shelter's executive director.

The test was carried out by shelter staff as part of its new policy of conducting randomized rapid COVID-19 tests on clients using the provincially administered point-of-care kits.

After a PCR test confirmed the positive result, Maddox said, staff moved the client to a motel for isolation, and made arrangements for food and necessities to be delivered to him there.

Since then, all residents and staff have been PCR-tested multiple times, and each time the results have been negative.

"So it was a lot of effort … on the part of my staff, who are absolutely brilliant, you know, working hard and being really diligent, you know, wearing PPE and face masks," Maddox said.

"It was, you know, a sort of stressful, anxious sort of experience overall, but we came through it with flying colours."

Maddox said the shelter is expected to be able to start taking in new clients again later this week.