Responding to COVID-19 in Emergency Shelters

On March 11, 2020, Mayor Bowser declared a coronavirus (COVID-19) public health emergency in the District of Columbia. Since then, the DC Department of Human Services modified operations and implemented a strategy to prevent the introduction and spread of COVID-19 in low-barrier shelters. The following details the steps and actions taken to protect the District's most vulnerable residents from the novel coronavirus and to prevent its spread in congregate shelters throughout the city.Our prevention and protection strategy for our emergency shelters has five key activities:Ensuring the safety of staff and providers is a top priority for DHS. Since the public health emergency was declared, we have partnered with providers to share guidance on operations and logistics, highlight national best practices and federal guidelines, and distribute personal protective equipment.DHS worked closely with shelter providers and stakeholders to implement the following procedures to prevent the introduction and spread of COVID-19 within District shelters.DHS established a daily screening system for all customers upon entry and carefully tracks new cases at each shelter. This allows us to quickly identify any outbreaks and implement a rapid response of isolation and quarantine as needed.We quickly identify new cases and conduct contact tracing in order to move all positive cases and close contacts to isolation and quarantine sites. We provide deep cleaning to all impacted dorms and common spaces.We partnered with the DC Department of Health to develop a mass testing strategy. Mass testing at a shelter is triggered by an outbreak (which is defined differently at different phases of the District reopening, depending on level of virus transmission). 

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