In UK, roving teams bring COVID-19 vaccine shots to homeless

LONDON (AP) — In a pandemic, homeless people face being more forgotten than they already are. But not by doctors like Dr. Anil Mehta, who is on a mission to bring the coronavirus vaccine to those hardest to reach and often most at risk of getting sick in east London.

Mehta, a general practitioner, and his small team of doctors and nurses have been showing up at homeless centers in his local area, a COVID-19 hotspot, offering a free jab to dozens who might otherwise get left behind in Britain’s mass vaccination drive.

“They will get missed if we don’t find them proactively,” Mehta said. “They really don’t have anything going for them, in terms of medical care. Finding them is absolutely essential to what we need to achieve in our boroughs.”

The homeless are not listed among the British government’s highest priority groups for the vaccine rollout — which currently include people over 70, nursing home residents, front-line medical staff and social care workers, as well as the clinically vulnerable.

Because those sleeping outside and people in shelters have no address that doctors can contact them at, some local authorities across Britain have begun sending out roving vaccination teams to identify the clinically vulnerable among them so they can have access to the jab.

The charity Homeless Link said the U.K. government last month appealed to local officials to accommodate as many so-called “rough sleepers” as possible and help them register with a doctor as temperatures plummet and as a more contagious virus variant drove a huge surge in U.K. infection rates. But the charity said there has been no clear strategy to ensure that the homeless get inoculated, and that means officials in different areas have been left to take different tacks.

“We believe that a targeted approach to vaccination is...