CHELSEA, Mass. — The City of Chelsea is one of the places in the state that was hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, where more cases have been reported there than in some of the hardest hit boroughs in New York City.
COVID-19 cases in Chelsea hit 541 as of Monday morning, a place where essential workers make up about 80% of the workforce - and nearly half of those workers don’t speak English.
“We’re a very dense community, we have intergenerational family compositions where it’s a cultural thing,” said Damali Vidot, the Chelsea City Councilor. “We are home, we’re an immigrant community, we speak 35 different languages.”
The state has been making strides in helping the Chelsea community by deploying more resources and agencies like MEMA to help out residents. MEMA is now providing housing and thousands of meals to residents affected by the health crisis.
About 40% of all positive cases admitted to Mass. General Hospital have been non-English speakers.
“So for me it’s scary because I have my youngest son at home and my oldest son, who’s working going back and forth to the bank and he’s having contact with people, with customers,” said Mira Romero, a Chelsea resident.
City councilors, advocates and the presidents of Beth Israel Lahey Hospital and MGH sent a letter to Governor Baker asking for food, emergency housing and multilingual communication support and manpower for Chelsea.
“We should be getting an additional amount of resources based on the impact and based on the number of cases,” said Maria Belan Power, of Green Roots. “Today, we have 541 cases in Chelsea, which exceeds 130% per 10,000 residents.”
Later the same day, Baker announced the state is setting up an isolation hotel for the homeless of Chelsea and Revere and for families who can’t quarantine at home.
“MEMA’s providing supplies to set up the hotel with linens and PPE and will begin providing food services when the hotel opens,” said Baker.
MGH Chelsea Healthcare Dr. Joe Betancourt says that, in addition to the hotels, MGH has expanded testing capacity and criteria, preparing care kits to be sent door to door.
“Our inability to address some of those things weeks ago now leads to those patients in those communities ending up in our hospitals and quick sick,” said Betancourt. “If it’s Katrina, it’s impacted communities that are low lying areas because that’s what they can afford, those are higher flood rates. If it’s the epidemic, if you live in certain social conditions, it puts you at a higher risk. Unless we’re able to put out these fires in these communities, we will continue to see a high amount of these patients.”
In addition to support from the state, Chelsea residents really need volunteers since many of the people working with distributing food have fallen sick.
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