Huntsville Hospital this week will begin administering COVID-19 tests to symptomatic members of the city’s homeless community.

"It's another step we're adding to the process to continue to take care of the community," Huntsville Hospital CEO David Spillers said Wednesday.

Assessing the health, from a coronavirus perspective, of the homeless community is the latest in a series of steps that Huntsville leaders are taking to help stem the spread of the deadly disease. The week-long testing process will begin Friday. The hospital is partnering with Thrive Alabama and the city of Huntsville as well as organizations that help care for the homeless such as the North Alabama Coalition for the Homeless (NACH), First Stop and the Downtown Rescue Mission.

Related: An 'epidemic waiting to happen’: Homeless community vulnerable to coronavirus

A count of Huntsville’s homeless earlier this year put the population at 561 people – the highest count in the Rocket City since 2013, according to the NACH. That includes 155 unsheltered in the homeless population, 38 in transitional housing and 368 in emergency shelters.

The homeless population among veterans is also climbing, rising for the past three years to about 45 men and women who served in the armed forces.

“The homeless population is a population that’s particularly vulnerable,” said John Hamilton, city administrator for the city of Huntsville. “There is a higher occurrence of health issues. We find a lot of them don’t do a great job of taking care of themselves, don’t do a great job of going to the doctor and availing themselves of the medical care that’s available to them. We want to make it easier for them to do that.”

That begins on Friday at First Stop, a homeless shelter near downtown Huntsville. Healthcare workers will be on site to evaluate members of the homeless population to determine – like others around the state – if they have symptoms of COVID-19 that would make a test necessary.

Spillers said Huntsville Hospital is covering the costs of the tests for the homeless.

Hamilton said that a healthcare team will return to First Stop on Monday for more testing, then likely fan out through the homeless community the rest of the week.

“Anybody who potentially has been exposed, has potentially contracted the disease, we want to know that,” Hamilton said.

Thrive and the city of Huntsville worked with the hospital on the COVID-19 drive-thru testing site that met initial demand in John Hunt Park.

In Birmingham, homeless advocates provided hand washing stations to help stave off spread of the disease.

Sharing information with the homeless community is another objective of the tests in Huntsville, Hamilton said. Some in the homeless community have isolated themselves from society to the point that they are not aware of the serious nature of the disease.

While being urged to follow social distancing guidelines and keeping hands sanitized may seem inescapable amid the pandemic, Hamilton said there may be corners of the homeless world where such protocols have not yet been shared.

“From where we sit in our lives, that’s hard to believe,” Hamilton said. “The reality is, there are folks who have just really isolated themselves. What Huntsville Hospital and Thrive also want to do as part of this process when they go to the site is use it as an educational opportunity.”