A small cluster of coronavirus cases at a Boston homeless shelter prompted broadscale testing at the facility, and officials were shocked by the results.
Of nearly 400 people tested at the Pine Street Inn earlier this month, 146 people tested positive for the virus. None of those who tested positive showed symptoms, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to begin “actively looking into” the results.
“It was like a double knockout punch. The number of positives was shocking, but the fact that 100% of the positives had no symptoms was equally shocking,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.
O’Connell said the findings have changed how the city’s homeless shelters are screening for the virus.
“All the screening we were doing before this was based on whether you had a fever above 100.4 and whether you had symptoms,” he said. “How much of the COVID virus is being passed by people who don’t even know they have it?”
The people who tested positive were immediately transferred to two isolation facilities in the city. O’Connell said only one of the patients needed to be hospitalized.
