Eight people infected with COVID-19 among those housed at midtown campus

By Daniel J. Chacón dchacon@sfnewmexican.com

May 11, 2020 Updated May 12, 2020

The city of Santa Fe worked relentlessly in March to transform what was then a mostly vacant midtown campus into an emergency shelter, primarily to try to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus among the homeless.

So far, the plan has worked, and now the campus is serving as a backup for hospitals and other facilities and providing housing for eight people who were recently transferred there after testing positive for COVID-19.

“The shelter has been operating so well that I think Christus [St. Vincent Regional Medical Center] and [the New Mexico Department of Health] have been looking for a way to use it as a fallback resource,” Mayor Alan Webber said Monday during a virtual news conference.

“As the other parts of the caring network need a relief valve, that space is now a relief valve,” he added.

The campus is currently housing 43 people.

The city’s public works director, Regina Wheeler, who has been serving as Santa Fe’s emergency operations incident commander for nearly two months, said none of the eight people infected with the contagious disease was admitted under the original process established by the city.

“You know how we’re taking homeless people that are screened from the shelters and are at risk on the streets and testing them? All the people that we’ve gotten that way are negative,” she said. “The way that I get my COVID positives are from the Department of Health or Buffalo Thunder or Christus St. Vincent. They have a COVID-positive person, and they seek some place to shelter them.”

Wheeler said people who have tested positive for COVID-19 are being housed at the shelter for various reasons.

“A big one is that Buffalo Thunder isn’t allowing oxygen in the rooms,” she said, referring to the casino and resort north of Santa Fe that is serving as a self-isolation site for New Mexico tribal members.

Webber called the emergency shelter at the old College of Santa Fe campus on St. Michael’s Drive “a national example of a remarkable achievement.”

While the city established the emergency shelter primarily for homeless people as it tried to alleviate overcrowding at homeless shelters, which one official called a “potential tinderbox” for the spread of the virus, it always envisioned housing other groups of people there, including health care workers who test positive for the coronavirus and might need a place to stay and be monitored medically.

But most of the residents up to this point have been homeless people.

“Starting Tuesday, [Albuquerque] Health Care for the Homeless will be running a clinic for the people there,” Webber said.

Webber said the emergency shelter is safe to visit, though he didn’t say whether he has been on the campus himself.

“There is a way to wear a mask and gloves and go check it out,” he said.

The emergency shelter is providing other benefits to homeless people in Santa Fe besides a roof over their heads and what the mayor said were “three square meals a day.”

“People are actually getting their lives together because they finally have a safe place to live and wraparound services,” Webber said.

The midtown campus, which the city is eyeing for redevelopment, started housing people on a temporary and emergency basis March 28.