Entire Myrtle Beach women’s homeless shelter quarantined after positive COVID-19 case
The entire women’s shelter at New Directions in Myrtle Beach is under quarantine after a positive coronavirus case was confirmed last week.
A woman at the shelter tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, New Directions Executive Director Kathy Jenkins confirmed to The Sun News. The woman and her roommate, who was showing symptoms last week and is awaiting test results, have been moved from the shelter and into a hotel with the help of the Eastern Carolina Housing Organization. The remaining 17 women in the shelter are also quarantined because they live in close quarters, Jenkins said.
This case comes on the heels of the first positive COVID-19 case at New Directions’ men’s shelter, which left 11 men in quarantine. Jenkins said there’s no indication the two cases are connected and the woman who tested positive doesn’t know where she contracted the virus.
“It’s just like everybody else,” she said. “You know, our women are out working. They’re not in isolation. So just like any of the rest of us, they can pick it up anywhere, pick it up at a doctor’s office and in the local 7/11, grocery store or any place else that people go to get the things that they need.”
For nearly 10 months, New Directions was able to keep the coronavirus from infiltrating its shelters. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control identifies homeless shelters as a “congregate setting” where the virus can be spread easily and social distancing is difficult.
“We just had that extra challenge that we had that many more people that live under our roof than your typical family, and we’re doing everything we can,” Jenkins said.
How COVID-19 affects homeless communities
In response to the positive cases, the men’s and women’s shelters were scheduled to be disinfected and steam-cleaned Monday, Jenkins said. The organization has also stopped accepting new people into the shelter to mitigate the spread of the virus and measures have been taken inside the shelter, such as having those in the men’s shelter sleep toe-to-head instead of side-by-side to minimize contact.
Though DHEC doesn’t specifically track cases of the coronavirus among the homeless population, 81 people voluntarily disclosed their status as homeless as of Dec. 15 across South Carolina. Of those, nearly 20% were hospitalized, DHEC data shows. The hospitalization rate is more than four times higher than that of the general population.
In the event that a New Directions client is hospitalized, Jenkins said the organization won’t be able to help with medical costs of any kind. Staff can help people set up Medicare or Medicaid if they qualify, but New Directions doesn’t have funding designated for medical expenses, Jenkins said.
Various moratoriums on evictions have been in place throughout the pandemic to decrease the number of people needing to live in homeless shelters and ultimately limit the spread of COVID-19. But the measures are complicated and have been inconsistently enforced, with thousands of eviction proceedings starting in Horry County during the fall and winter.