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Contributor is exactly
Andrew Duffy
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2020-06-11Supports for homeless people fight infection: How the Shepherds of Good Hope put the brakes on a COVID-19 outbreak
This in-depth newspaper piece discusses how the Ottawa Inner City Health organization and the city's 4 largest homeless shelters: The Shepherds of Good Hope, The Ottawa Mission, the Salvation Army, and Cornerstone Housing for Women, prepared for and have been seeking to limited the spread of and treat Covid-19 infections among the vulnerable homeless population. The Shepherds of Good Hope experiences an outbreak (an 'outbreak' is a cluster of cases which occurs within an institution and requires specific responses by the institution under law) but due to the protocols in place, it was limited and ended quickly. A highlight of the article is the anecdote regarding masked. While Ottawa Inner City Health was not provided with the PPE it initially ordered due to a mix up regarding their place in the queue for supplies during a shortage. However, masks, specifically, did not end up being an issue, as the Salvation Army found a palette of unused N-95 masks it had ordered during the 2009 H1N1 epidemic and which had been forgotten in the back of their loading dock for those 11 years. The palette contained 10,000 masks which were then shared among the various centres.