CORONAVIRUS
UNCHARTED TERRIT
The coronavirus outbreak has
transformed almost every aspect
of our society at dizzying speed.
DDN looks at the impact so far
on treatment services and their
vulnerable client groups
P
ublic health experts had been saying for years that a
pandemic on the scale of ‘Spanish flu’ in 1918 was long
overdue, and there were fears that it had arrived with avian
flu and later with the SARS coronavirus in the early 2000s.
When COVID-19 hit, however, it was the real deal. The final
impact may prove to be far less deadly than 1918, but only
time will tell. In the meantime the situation is changing at breakneck speed,
with society’s most vulnerable – as always – at particular risk.
The long-term impact on the drug and alcohol treatment sector also
remains unknown. The fallout from the financial crash of 2008 led to the
prolonged austerity policies that decimated the treatment field, and there
is no doubt that COVID-19 will cause a recession – it’s just a matter of how
deep and how long. And no one in the field needs reminding that when
decisions are made about which groups to spend scarce resources on, their
clients tend not to be near the top of the list.
But for now there’s an urgent health crisis to deal with. Services know
that their older clients are an extremely vulnerable population, and many
will have long-term respiratory issues as well as weakened immune
systems and overall poor health – both physical and mental. One of the
most vulnerable populations of
all, of course, is people sleeping
Top: Glasgow city centre, empty
rough. Homelessness charities
streets on a normally busy day.
were issuing increasingly urgent
Top right: A bus driver wears a
messages about the need for clear
protective face mask in Somerset.
guidance and warning they would
Right: Masks for sale in a shop
be forced to turn people away
window in Brighton.
6 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • APRIL 2020
from shelters if they presented with symptoms. When official guidance did
come it was swiftly branded inadequate, as it failed to set out how those
sleeping rough would be able to self-isolate. The government subsequently
instructed local authorities to provide accommodation for all rough sleepers
by the evening of 29 March, but days later it was still unclear how many
homeless people had yet to be housed.
Treatment agencies meanwhile are acting on government and PHE
advice as well as drawing up their own action plans. Peer-led charity
Build on Belief (BoB) felt it had no choice but to close in order to protect
the health of volunteers, staff and service users. ‘It was an extremely
difficult decision,’ chief executive Tim Sampey tells DDN. ‘All our services
are London-based so we’re up to our necks in this. We’ve always recruited
from our volunteer teams, so of course people have underlying health
issues across the board. We figured out that two thirds of everybody either
volunteering or working for this organisation has an underlying health
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