Related older article:
What happens if the coronavirus sweeps through Kensington Avenue?
That’s the fear on everyone’s mind in a neighborhood that has no equivalent elsewhere in America, a few square urban miles overwhelmed by a vast open-air drug market and its customers: the hundreds of young people with addiction, many of them homeless, who live and use opioids, huddled on the main thoroughfare.
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Here, vulnerable people shoulder at once the effects of several devastating public health crises: The grip of addiction. The diseases that can follow — like
last summer’s hepatitis A outbreak. The gun violence sparked by the drug trade, outmatched only by
the staggering fatal overdose rate.
The worry about an outbreak in Kensington stems not just from the fact that the neighborhood’s homeless population has almost nowhere else to go and cannot effectively socially distance — not to mention
risking overdose if they use drugs alone.
It’s because many residents with homes are unable to stay there. They are low-paid essential workers required to report for duty. They don’t have enough money to shop in bulk, and must make daily forays for supplies. Many have precarious health care, or are dealing with underlying conditions worsened by poverty and potentially made deadly by the virus.
“No one deserves what’s brewing in Kensington,” said Councilmember María Quiñones-Sánchez, who represents most of the neighborhood.
As the pandemic surges, ‘no one deserves what’s brewing in Kensington.’
https://www.inquirer.com/health/cor...d-19-coronavirus-respite-center-20200409.html
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