Coronavirus: Terror in Miami

According to the Miami Herald, Miami’s homeless population “faces a huge risk, as the disease keeps people in their houses.  

This was how two journalists from that newspaper, Joey Flechas and Alex Harris, described the situation on Thursday.

At the same time, it was known that local Mayor Carlos Jiménez ordered to shut down Miami-Dade County parks and beaches.  

As well as non-essential retail businesses to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.  

The article narrates the case of Ron Jones, who roamed local libraries until going to sleep at the Miami Rescue Center’s homeless shelter.

One day, narrate Flechas and Harris, the disease came.

Jones, a 64-year-old cancer survivor, returned to live on the streets and to sleep near a hand-washing station.  

He confessed he was safer alongside a busy road near Wynwood than in the shelter, where men crammed together on the floor.  

“Should one of them caught it, I’ll be right there,” he said. “I left because I was afraid of catching it.”

Jones worked as a house painter until his medical cancer bills led him to bankruptcy two years ago.  

He also said that the shelter does not allow them to take a shower, and that after the shutdown of the libraries he has no place where to get information on Covid-19. “We’re stuck out here with nothing”, he stated.  

The Miami Herald commented that Ron Jones’s story highlights the difficulties of surviving a pandemic when the official advice is to stay at home, “and the person has no home.”

The article continues to affirm that surviving a pandemic in Miami is something familiar to its homeless people.
 
There, the Herald journalists added, for some poor people living on the streets and the medical workers who interact with them the concept of “harm reduction” is part of their daily life.

And they pointed out that intravenous drug users fight the spread of HIV and hepatitis by exchanging used needles for clean ones in a health center run by the University of Miami.  

However, the coronavirus has come to complicate everything.  

Actually, there has been another Covid-19, the one who has acted as president from the White House’s Oval Office.

Translated by Jorge Mesa Benjamin / CubaSi Translation Staff