I have previously written about “the forgotten” and why Coronavirus infection in these populations affects us all.  I am talking about people in prisons, people in nursing homes and people in homeless shelters.  Outbreaks of COVID-19 in these populations do not remain contained. They spill into the general population by way of prison wardens, nursing home staff and the homeless populate not only the shelters but also the subways and parks.  A similar situation is the captive population on a cruise ship.

To give an idea of the scope of the problem, in the US, 567 715 people were homeless on a single night in January 2019.

In March, 2020, the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) tested all comers from a single large homeless shelter in Boston (excluding those that were already known to have the virus):