Homeless COVID-19 Center At Cashman Center In Downtown Las Vegas Closes Tuesday With Pandemic Still Going On
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The temporary COVID-19 isolation and quarantine center for the homeless in downtown Las Vegas was built 2 1/2 months ago at the Cashman Center and it closed Tuesday with the coronavirus pandemic still going on.
It was a joint Clark County-City of Las Vegas project, officially called the ISO-Q (Isolation and Quarantine) Complex not too far from where the Las Vegas Lights FC play its soccer games at Cashman Field. In the end, the complex served 245 people since opening April 13. LVSportsBiz.com was there April 13 for a tour.
The temporary big tents gave the homeless a place to quarantine and ensure that others were not infected, with some people recovering from COVID-19. Here’s a photo of the frame of one of the big tent structures.
Staff administered 860 COVID-19 tests, 17 of which were positive.
The ISO-Q helped 22 COVID-19 positive individuals recover.
Before the ISO-Q center was built, some homeless slept overnight on the parking lot surface with striped rectangles indicating where they were supposed to sleep in late March.
The complex provided 2,220 individual nights of acute observation since the first patient arrived.
Without the ISO-Q, additional pandemic patients would have been sent to area hospitals for observation. In addition, more than 20,000 health screenings have occurred at the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center since April 13.
Remaining people at the complex in the Cashman lot off Las Vegas Boulevard were being moved to other facilities to continue their quarantine and recovery.
There were six COVID-19 positive individuals who were at the ISO-Q and were moved Monday.
The county will continue to find housing and care for medically fragile homeless individuals who would have been placed at the Cashman facility. Those placements are expected to largely be at county-funded facilities. The city will continue to operate the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center as a haven for any who are in need.
The ISO-Q saw a high of 66 individuals at the complex on April 30, and the high in May was 54 patients on May 17 and 18.
Since then the number of individuals at the facility has steadily declined to the 12 that were at the facility on June 29.
Construction on the Cashman ISO-Q Complex began March 31 by Vision Building Systems. It is believed that the Cashman ISO-Q was a first-of-its-kind complex in the nation, serving the homeless population during the pandemic.
Patients in need were transported or referred from area hospitals and medical providers, freeing up additional hospital bed space. Hospitals continued to provide care for the seriously ill and those in need of a ventilator. The city of Las Vegas provided perimeter fencing, Wi-Fi, potable water and sewer connection. The tents included heating/air conditioning, power, lights and 10-by-10-foot individual rooms. There were separate tents and restroom/shower facilities for those in quarantine and those in isolation.
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