By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Care Foundation, July 28, 2020
For San Francisco public health officials, it was a potential nightmare scenario.
On May 7, a man experiencing homelessness tested positive for COVID-19. He had just visited the city’s Sobering Center, a facility in the South of Market district where intoxicated people can recover safely without being transported to overcrowded hospital emergency rooms.
Before anyone realized the man had COVID-19, he had exposed 17 other people he had been with at the sobering center. These exposed individuals spent their days interacting with the public — panhandling, entering stores, visiting hospital emergency rooms, and spending time on the streets. Without prompt action to get them off the streets, they might have become coronavirus “superspreaders” — people who infect a disproportionate number of other people.
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