The chairperson of the Dennis Hurley Centre, Raymond Perrier, says COVID-19 will spread rapidly among the homeless around Durban because there is no way to keep track of them after they leave the centre.
At the start of the national lockdown, over 1 000 homeless people were screened and housed in different shelters around the city.
In the video below, the homeless are still shelterless:
Perrier says coronavirus tests have been conducted but since most have returned to the streets, it will be difficult to trace them.
“The nature of how people live on the streets is obviously very hard for them to self-isolate, but also homeless people cannot be very aware of their health issues. So even if you did test and set up a system of self-isolation it’s unclear whether homeless people would adhere to that, so there is a risk that they will catch the virus. A risk that they will transmit it and the risk that if they do catch it they will suffer from bad effects because of key morbidity involved.”
The video below is on providing shelter for the homeless under lockdown:
