18 people connected to Durham homeless shelter test positive for coronavirus

A homeless shelter in Durham reported 18 cases of COVID-19 among residents and staff.

On Monday, the staff at the Urban Ministries of Durham learned that a shelter resident had tested positive for COVID-19. The resident was moved to an isolated location for homeless people who test positive in Durham County, according to an email release from UMD.

Further testing found 16 additional positive COVID-19 cases among shelter residents and one among staff, the email said.

Shelter residents who tested positive have been moved into the isolation location. Staff have disinfected the shelter, which will undergo a professional deep-cleaning Saturday.

“As Durham’s primary public shelter for adults experiencing homelessness and the back-up shelter for families, we care for a vulnerable population,” Executive director Sheldon Mitchell wrote in an emailed news release. “With coronavirus cases spiking across our state, we are in the midst of an especially challenging time.”

This is the second outbreak at the shelter in recent months. Three cases were reported among residents in July, when they were living at the Marriott at Research Triangle Park, The News & Observer reported.

Mitchell said the shelter has taken a number of precautions to protect residents from COVID-19, according to an emailed news release. Staff regularly take residents’ temperatures and have installed barriers. Mask-wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing are all enforced.

The shelter has reduced its capacity from 149 to 83 beds.

Despite those precautions, the open nature of the shelter makes it difficult to keep the virus out, said Joe Daly, director of development, in a phone interview Friday.

“We’re really a low-barrier shelter, which means residents come and go,” Daly said. “A lot of them have jobs, they go back and forth to run errands, to look for work, to try to secure housing, so it’s not like we’re in any kind of a lockdown setting.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 6:53 PM.