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'We're having a COVID outbreak right now'

Imagine this: You’re expecting a lot of people for dinner. They show up around 5 p.m. and assemble beneath the covering over your front porch before entering your place. Now, imagine discovering that several of them are testing positive for COVID-19 and that you’ll need to separate the ill from the well before accepting all of them into your place.

I witnessed such a scene Sunday.

In the late afternoon Sunday, while the sky was issuing an ice-cold rain that felt like nature was being unnecessarily cruel, about a dozen people sought protection from the weather on the Cedar Street side of Community Lifeline’s shelter in downtown Shelton. A portico covers the entrance on that side of the street.

Those people were waiting to be allowed inside for food and a place to spend the night. A few people on the walkway leading to the entrance were apart from the huddle on the portico, including a man who was pacing and appeared to be in his early 20s. The temperature was just above freezing and the rain was nearly as thick and penetrating as the soaker setting on a garden hose.

The young man asked for the time.

“About 5:30,” I said. The doors should be opening soon, I told him, according to what I thought I knew. What I didn’t know was the people on the porch had just tested positive for COVID.

The young man looked around. “I don’t have s_ _ _!” he said, perhaps addressing the universe.

That young man’s statement appeared more true than not.

I approached another man, one better equipped for the rain and cold, who said the doors weren’t open because they were having a COVID outbreak.

During last week’s inclemency, did you take a moment to imagine what not having shelter would be like in weather like this? It could have included this scene.

I walked to the Third Street side of the building to find someone who could tell me what was happening. I looked through the window in the door and saw a couple of workers inside the entrance alcove tending to boxes used for to-go food. I knocked. A worker opened the door, and I stated my business: I wished to talk to anyone who had spent the previous few nights outside in the subfreezing temperatures.

After a minute of back and forth, one of the workers said, calmly, “We’re having a COVID outbreak right now.”

The worker went to get the shelter manager, and Athena Ayres appeared within a few minutes. Ayres said they were in the process of giving COVID tests, which would allow them to identify the COVID-positive and COVID-negative people before separating them on different floors of the building. The people on the portico had tested positive.

Ayers explained all this without raising her voice, rushing her words or expressing any sign of being smack dab in the middle of a dire moment. It was a monumental display of battle cool, and I didn’t want her to waste time on me. I said I’d call another day.

“We are dealing with a COVID outbreak,” Ayers told me over the phone the next day. She said they were able to situate the positive people on a separate floor, where they had their own facilities, including a separate entry and exit.

She said, as of Monday afternoon, that about 13 people who use the shelter had tested positive, including two staff members, while about an equal number tested negative. About six staffers were onsite Sunday night.

“We’re doing well,” she said Monday. They’ve received donations of cots and PPE (personal protective equipment). The United Way has pitched in.

What about the people who tested positive?

“If they’re positive, they have to stay isolated; they’re not supposed to leave the property, but we can’t force them to stay,” Ayers said. “We had one person leave, but the majority of them have been responsible and stayed.”

And you’re able to protect yourselves?

“Of course,” Ayers said. “Mask and gloves. And social distance. But we also understand how important it is that we’re here for these vulnerable people.”

Sunday’s COVID outbreak illustrates just how difficult it can be to help people without shelter, but it’s less hard to help the helpers. Find a way by going to cllshelton.com.

Author Bio

Kirk Ericson, Columnist / Proofreader

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Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
email: [email protected]

 

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