Study highlights that the "incidence rate to COVID-19 in the homeless population is lower than in the general population"

The study "Vulnerable more vulnerable? Diagnosis and prevention of COVID-19 risk and inflammatory state in homeless people in Lisbon", developed by the platforms Nursing Research Platform and Lisbon and SalivaTec of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS) of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in partnership with NPISA Lisbon (planning unit Intervention for the Homeless Person), revealed that the homeless population has an incidence rate of 2% while the national average is 18%.

Of the 500 homeless people who participated in the study, the COVID-19 positive cases who were temporarily living in emergency shelters were isolated in the shelters themselves, after the Regional and Local Health authorities had been notified. Other positive cases of homeless people were located on the street and referred to the Back-up Support Structure in order to guarantee isolation and convalescence.

This research aimed, in a first phase, to diagnose the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in homeless people who use the Alcântara Public Bathhouse and the NPISA structures, using saliva tests developed by SalivaTec and to promote the follow-up and clinical referral of the positive cases detected.

Amélia Simões Figueiredo, lead researcher of the study and Director of the School of Nursing (Lisbon) of the ICS-UCP, states that "we will now begin the 2nd phase of the study which will seek to relate the diagnosis with the inflammatory status of individuals and other factors associated with the participants of the study at the Beato Shelter and the Santa Bárbara Municipal Emergency Accommodation Centre" by trying to answer questions such as:

• Do the contexts in which homeless people stay at night interfere in the value of the incidence rate for COVID 19?
• Do the medications associated with the study subjects' comorbidities interfere with this rate?

This research has Programmatic funding assigned by FCT to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Health (CIIS) of UCP (Project UIDP/04279/2020).

The study, which has a favorable opinion from the Ethics Committee for Health of the ARSLVT, is led by Amélia Simões Figueiredo, from the Nursing School of the Institute of Health Sciences, and also includes researchers from the Católica Medical School and the Faculty of Dental Medicine.