In mid-March, as Gov. Gavin Newsom was ordering Californians to stay home to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, Kim Lau was thinking about the thousands of Sacramentans who don’t have a home.

Were they getting services they needed to become educated about the virus and take precautions against it?

The 26-year-old first year medical student at California Northstate University reached out to Crystal Sanchez, an activist with the Sacramento Homeless Union.

“She basically said, ‘Come see for yourself’ and so I did,” Lau said. “What we found was ... they had little to no awareness to the extent of the pandemic. There was so much misinformation about how the virus was spread.”

Lau got a few of her classmates together to go to encampments and provide basic education about the virus. She also sent an email to all medical students at UC Davis, and more students joined the effort. They’re now up to 23 medical and pharmacy students at the two universities who go out twice weekly to seven camps around the county.

From there, their mission elevated. They provide not only basic education, but also are offering coronavirus testing. With the help of on-call residents and physician assistants, they’re able to prescribe medications for other ailments.

The group, called the Encampment Med Team, was recently sworn in as disaster relief workers with Sacramento County, but are not being paid. Many of them are doing the volunteer work on top of their regular full-time class load.

‘They’re super appreciative’

The students have so far come across just a few homeless people who showed symptoms of coronavirus, Lau said. The group has so far tested a couple, but the results are either not back yet or came back negative.

On Thursday, Sacramento County officials said two homeless people who were hospitalized had tested positive for the virus - the first known instances of infection among the county’s homeless population. It’s unknown where the two had been living and if either had spent time in a shelter before going to the hospital.

Many of the individuals the group has contacted have been suffering from other medical issues the students have been able to help with, however. For many of the homeless people sleeping in camps downtown or along the American River, it’s the first time they’ve had any form of medical care in months or even years.

One man who sleeps downtown had stitches on his face that had been in for three months - two and a half months longer than they should be, said Christina Lowry, a third-year UC Davis medical student. Lowry removed the stitches.

Lowry, 29, is still working on curriculum, but her rotations, which typically place her in hospitals for 80 hours a week, were canceled, freeing up time in her days.

“I thought about how this was such an incredibly vulnerable population,” said Lowry, who lives in Sacramento. She signed on as co-lead with Lau.

In her eight times going out to provide services, Lowry has also handed out band-aids and gauze to people with open wounds, and provided creams and ointments to people with rashes and who suffer from lower back pain from sleeping on the ground.

She also provided consultations with a man who was experiencing numbness in his feet and with a woman who was having stomach aches when taking her medication.

When she heads out to Cesar Chavez Park twice a week - often with food provided from the newly-formed Sacramento SOUP coalition and other groups - people recognize her and call her by name.

“They’re super appreciative,” Lowry said. “People are starting to come up to us now because they recognize us and trust us.”

Since Annica Stull-Lane, a fifth-year MD/PHD student at UC Davis, started going out to camps along the American River, she’s noticed how many people are smokers. She also noticed how many have COPD and other pre-existing respiratory conditions that could make them vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus.

The virus is most dangerous for the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. A January 2019 count estimated 5,570 homeless people were living in the county, mostly sleeping outdoors and mostly in the city of Sacramento. About 20 percent of those sleeping outdoors were over age 55. Of those over age 55, 66 percent reported a mental or physical impairment.

Coronavirus prevention for homeless

Stull-Lane’s team have only so far met one woman with symptoms that could be the virus - a woman who was over the age of 60 with a cough - but she’s worried there will be more.

“We’re worried that if a case does pop up here where people are closer together, it could be pretty severe,” Stull-Lane said. “What’s really important right now is prevention and education.”

To help with prevention, Stull-Lane and the other students have been handing out masks and hand sanitizer.

They’ve also been clearing up misconceptions about the virus. Stull-Lane recently met a woman who thought the virus could be spread the same way as HIV, she said, while Lowry has met homeless people who thought they could contract it from the soil. They explained how the virus is contracted from respiratory droplets and emphasized the importance of washing hands and social distancing.

To help prevent the virus, Lao is also urging local officials to place more portable toilets and hand washing stations near the camps and to increase trash pickup.

She’s also urging the local police to stop clearing encampments. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month issued guidelines recommending police stop clearing encampments during the pandemic. It said clearing encampments makes it harder for people to get services and also increases the risk of spread.

Sacramento police say they’re only clearing encampments when they are a public safety issue, such as blocking sidewalks or enforcing an ordinance that bars homeless from sleeping outside City Hall during the day. Activists say they should stop the so-called “sweeps” entirely during the coronavirus.

County and city officials last week announced a plan to move homeless people into 990 new beds in motels, RVs and existing shelters. To start, officials are only placing people in the beds if they have tested positive for the virus, have been recently exposed to someone who tested positive, are experiencing symptoms, or are over age 65 with pre-existing conditions, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said.

The county has started moving homeless individuals into motel rooms, but not trailers, Haynes said.

“I think it’s not very realistic to believe they can all be housed in time,” Lau said. “The best thing we can do is give them tools to protect them from the disease.”

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