Homeless shelter in Durham reports coronavirus outbreak

Three residents of an emergency homeless shelter run by Urban Ministries of Durham have tested positive for the coronavirus, the executive director said in an email Tuesday.

Shelter operators were told June 29 that a hospitalized resident tested positive for the coronavirus, said the email from Sheldon Mitchell. Two asymptomatic cases were found among residents when all residents and employees were tested.

The two residents who tested positive are in isolation, the email said.

All staff members tested negative, Joe Daly, the organization’s director of development, said in an interview with The News & Observer Tuesday. They will be tested again Thursday or Friday. Testing is being offered to volunteers, though none have interacted closely with residents, Daly said.

This is the second outbreak reported at a Durham homeless shelter. A mother and three children at the Durham Rescue Mission’s shelter for women and children tested positive for the virus last month, The News & Observer reported.

People with underlying health conditions are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and being homeless is essentially an underlying condition, Dr. Brian Klausner, a WakeMed doctor, told The News & Observer in April.

Residents of the Urban Ministries shelter have been living at the Marriott at Research Triangle Park for the last three months, but are moving back to the Liberty Street location Tuesday.

The shelter has reduced its capacity from 149 beds to 83 beds to meet requirements for social distancing.

Medically fragile shelter residents and some others who won’t fit in the reduced-capacity Liberty Street campus will move to the Carolina Duke Inn, Daly said. Shelter workers were still looking for places for some residents Tuesday morning.

Affordable housing was hard to find before the coronavirus pandemic, and now it’s even tougher, Daly said.

“We’ve been very aggressive in trying to get people housed,” he said.