Homeless at higher risk during coronavirus outbreak

Death of shelter worker highlights problem of helping people living on the streets

On the afternoon of Jan 16, Wu Qian, who worked at a homeless shelter in Wuhan, Hubei province, departed the city with two colleagues and a deaf boy.

The trio had boarded a bullet train to escort the 9-year-old back to his home 985 kilometers away in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

The boy, identified as Tao, had been noticed by railway employees the night before on a slow train from Guangzhou to Hankou Station in Wuhan. Tao had run away from home and been missing for 30 hours.

He was wearing a cochlear implant and the train crew managed to gather information from him about his family contacts.

When the train arrived at Hankou, local authorities contacted the homeless shelter. As Lunar New Year was approaching, the shelter workers were anxious to get the boy home as soon as possible. With tens of millions of Chinese planning their family reunion trips, tickets were getting harder to purchase.

"We had been asked to get ready in just 10 minutes," said one of the workers who accompanied the boy to Guangzhou that day, who asked not to be named.

She had a fever and felt ill but soon recovered. At the time, Wuhan had yet to raise alarms about the novel coronavirus, and its ability to jump from human to human. Few travelers wore face masks.

The trio took a bullet train and arrived in Guangzhou at around 10 pm and handed Tao to his anxious father.

Mission completed, they boarded a return bullet train at 11.30 pm and arrived in Wuhan at 4 am.

It was the last work trip that Wu would make. At some point during the trip he became infected with the novel coronavirus.

Wu had a persistent high fever, which in a matter of days developed into an infection. He died less than a month later, age 37.

Native son

Wu, a native of Wuhan where the novel coronavirus emerged in December, had two young daughters.

He obtained a bachelor's degree in art and design in 2005 from the Wuhan University of Technology and joined the shelter in 2010.

The young father succumbed to the virus on Feb 10 at a hospital in Wuhan.

Three days earlier, he posted on QQ, a popular messaging tool, that his determination to get better while in the isolation ward was driven by his wish to be back with his wife and daughters.

He had spent almost every workday of the past decade seeing to it that homeless people were reunited with their families as soon as possible.

"No problems were reported during his 10 years in service," said Liu Yong, who oversees the relief work at the shelter. "He may have looked rough on the outside, but he was a very thoughtful person."

Wu's death shed light on the vulnerability of shelter workers during the outbreak, which prompted local governments to strengthen measures to help the homeless.

On the move, and often unable or unwilling to provide proper identification, homeless people are among the most vulnerable to the new virus. Widespread travel bans to slow the spread of the virus also left many people stranded in Wuhan with no money to pay for lodgings.

To curb infections, shelters have stepped up efforts to accommodate the homeless. Health screenings are tight for the newcomers and body temperature checks are frequent.

Wuhan's Civil Affairs Bureau also rolled out plans to accommodate the stranded.

Bureau figures show that by Friday, a total of 69 shelters had been set up in buildings around the city to cater for 4,843 people without lodgings. More than 16 million yuan ($2.28 million) has also been allocated to 5,839 homeless people.