Saskatoon advocates concerned COVID-19 could spread in homeless shelters while people await test results

Advocates in Saskatoon are worried that a problem with the province's COVID-19 policy could put the shelter system in the city at risk.

Right now, people entering the shelter system are strongly encouraged to get a COVID-19 test. If they are symptomatic, they are provided with a hotel room to isolate, await test results and get better. If they're asymptomatic, they are allowed to stay in a shelter while they await their test results.

This puts dozens and dozens of people at risk, advocates say. Shelters are communal living settings and despite best efforts, distancing cannot always be followed.

Colleen Christopherson-Cote with the Saskatoon Inter-Agency Response to COVID-19 wants to knows why shelters should have to take the chance.

The issue is higher-level decision making within government that has created policy that can't equate to good practice on the ground.- Colleen Christopherson-Cote

"The language from the health authority and the ministry always was 'anyone who is in the process of being tested is assumed to be positive,'" she said. 

"Because isn't that a smart thing to assume? Why are you being tested if you're not worried that you might be positive?"

She said if COVID-19 got into a shelter it would be a disaster, not only because it would "spread like wildfire," but because people without housing are often in high-risk categories medically. She said it would overwhelm the hospitals in Saskatoon. 

Christopherson-Cote said if community organizations had the money to put their clients into hotels, they would, but they don't. She said the government has a responsibility to financially support vulnerable people.

"This is another example of government putting the costs and the burdens onto the community to provide the solution," she said. 

Christopherson-Cote said she and others have been trying to raise this with the province since the beginning of the pandemic. 

The provincial Ministry of Social Services said in a short statement that everyone who is required to isolate but doesn't have the means is given a place. 

The province has seen at least one public instance of someone not isolating while awaiting a test result and later finding out they were positive. This summer, Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) president Glen McCallum was asymptomatic and awaiting test results, but attended conferences and visited many businesses in the Waskesiu before his test came back positive. 

The problems with the way the system is working right now are exacerbated by the fact that it's getting cold now, and it's a domino effect, Christopherson-Cote said.

Parts of some emergency shelters, such as cafeterias, have been turned into space for beds. Once it gets cold enough for the Cold Weather Strategy to kick in in Saskatoon, those places that are normally warm up stations won't be able to serve that purpose. 

Christopherson-Cote said she has heard similar concerns from health authority employees in Saskatoon. 

"The issue is higher-level decision making within government that has created policy that can't equate to good practice on the ground," she said.

Lyn Brown, executive director at the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP), agreed with Christopherson-Cote that if COVID-19 got into the system, it could be very bad. 

"We feel that this puts us in immediate danger of having something like that occur and having individuals in the vulnerable homelessness community unnecessarily exposed to the opportunity to end up with COVID-19," she said. 

"I think it's critical that we are aware of how some of the decision making ... [affects] our vulnerable homeless population and I think that we need to step back and consider them when we make decisions."