More checked in Friday and Saturday as well, rounding out a complicated logistical feat of transporting about 200 shelter residents into the private rooms of an abandoned hotel. The task of moving operations south, intended to prevent a widespread coronavirus outbreak among clients, has left parts of DESC's expansive downtown Seattle shelter empty for the first time in 40 years.

In many ways, for those who now have a door they can lock, the rooms are less a respite from the new residents' fears of infection and more from their typical reality in a crowded homeless shelter; several of the occupants were hardly concerned about the coronavirus at all.

“The shelter is just a big large room,” said resident Allan Loveday, a guitar slung on his back. “You’ve got people yapping and talking around you and you never know what they’re going to say or what they’re going to do. This is better.”

As shelter operators and service providers scramble to provide safer spaces for their clients during the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s not lost on them that some of these recent changes are steps for which they’ve agitated for years.

What’s healthier in a pandemic, they say, is also healthier in general.

Read more: Coronavirus threatens 'extraordinarily vulnerable' homeless population

Now with the crisis straining systems and putting vulnerable populations at risk, the coronavirus has only highlighted the ongoing failures of the region to address homelessness. It’s difficult to imagine returning to that normal, providers say.

“For a long time we’ve made that difficult choice of prioritizing quantity over quality because it’s better to have someone indoors than it is to be outdoors,” said Daniel Malone, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center. “I don’t think that’s really an acceptable stance for us to have anymore.”

He added, “I hope that we as a society do not go back to the status quo from February and instead we’ll say, ‘that way of doing things is a relic of the past and we’re going to choose to do things differently.’ ”

'Very worried'

Whatever optimism may exist that King County is “bending the curve” of coronavirus transmissions is not felt by those who work in the world of social services. As those with homes distance themselves from the threat of infection, the hundreds of people sharing close quarters in shelters have their own curve to reckon with.

“In a way it makes me worried that the general population might be feeling encouraged,” said Nicole Macri, DESC’s deputy director for strategy and a representative of Seattle’s 43rd district in the state Legislature. “Those of us working in homelessness response still need to be very, very worried.”

Service providers and government officials early on sought to reduce the density in some of the region’s most crowded spaces. But as the pandemic has marched forward, even that approach felt insufficient.

Public health officials announced last week that 27 people at 12 homeless shelters in King County had tested positive for COVID-19, including in a Seattle Center location opened specifically in response to the pandemic. Five of those positive cases were clients of DESC.

The scope of the problem could be even wider. Macri said that upwards of 15 percent of their clients are showing COVID-like symptoms — or as many as 80 people. In San Francisco, one shelter had 70 positive cases. In Boston, where they cast a wide net and tested about 600 people experiencing homelessness for COVID-19, 30 percent were found to be positive. In the general population, between 9 and 17 percent of coronavirus tests come back positive, depending on the location.

With so much unknown about the disease — and shifting research about the effect of asymptomatic carriers — the stakes are exceedingly high in crowded shelter settings.

“If you live in a home and you have a job that you can do by Zoom and you’re just with your household members and you have an asymptomatic disease it’s not such a big deal,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, MD, Director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco. “If you are in a homeless shelter with 100 other people, many of whom carry incredible risk were they to become infected, asymptomatic spread is a very big deal.”

Steps to prevent infection in local shelters have been shifting. It started with deep cleaning, then progressed to isolating symptomatic clients and encouraging more use of personal protective gear for staff. To decrease crowding, clients have been moved into makeshift shelters and community centers.

But with limited resources and space, it’s been difficult.

“Despite having greater distance, you can’t truly have the required social distance between people in congregate settings,” said Malone.

So DESC staff began talking with city and county officials about finding a place where their clients could have individual rooms. After looking at several locations, the manager of the Renton Red Lion agreed. Two other shelters — Catholic Community Services and Sophia Way — have also begun moving clients into hotels.

The task of relocating that many people was daunting, but it was better than the widespread outbreak feared by staff.

“Nothing seemed so daunting or more compelling than the fact that we’re reducing the risk to clients by giving them individual units,” Macri said.