COVID-19 pandemic ravages Arizona outreach service models as new variants emerge

By Terrance Thornton
Twitter: @ININEWSMAN

A cascade of cause and effect is washing over various sectors of human service organizations throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area as outreach officials report stark increases in efforts to combat homelessness and a deep concern emerging around the region about keeping existing child care infrastructure intact.

Meanwhile, a doctor of virology based in Tempe reports all indications suggest COVID-19 variants are real, are present here in Arizona — and ultimately new vaccines will have to be introduced to the general population.

“What everybody needs to understand is the emergence of a virus is nothing new,” said Chandler resident Dr. Jeffery Langland, professor and chair at the Research Department at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, 2140 E. Broadway Road.

“This is just part of what a population goes through, the pandemic of influenza in 1918 had a lot of similarities in the coordinating of handling the societal effects of the pandemic. But it was even worse, resulting in an estimated 20 to 100 million deaths.”

Dr. Langland focuses his work on evidence-based botanical medicine research and finding cutting-edge approaches to instruction on virology at the College of Naturopathic Medicine.

“With our world population, multiple things are happening. These pandemics may happen in the future and will likely continue to happen in the future,” he said of stark realities of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic claiming more than 15,000 Arizona lives and nearly half a million souls lost nationwide.

“We have some populations who live in a very deep density and we are also dealing with a population that is not the fittest, which are situations the virus can take advantage of. We are exposing humans to zoophytic viruses.”

Variants of the virus have emerged both in the United Kingdom and the continent of Africa, Dr. Langland reports.

“Organisms that include a virus, when they replicate, sometimes they will make mistakes when they copy themselves, and those mutations oftentimes are benign,” he said of the natural process. “Unfortunately, mutations or mistakes can lead to these new variants that may have some advantages against the human body. We know now this virus did come from an animal.”

But as the virus mutated and transferred into human cells, the process duplicated billions of times.

“Once it got through millions of humans over the last year, this virus has been replicated an astronomical amount of times — some of these changes have been the virus adapting to recognize the human body better,” Dr. Langland explained. “The UK variant, it is able to transmit more effectively, but it is not more lethal.”

Dr. Langland, in a macabre sense of optimism, points out viruses want the host organism to survive as long as possible, but alongside that behavior vaccination formulas will likely have to be adjusted.

“With the new variants, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines were developed with the original virus,” he said. “It did change itself and those vaccines don’t recognize it as well. The South African variant, however, it does have a few more variations where the vaccine efficacy has gone down six-fold. Moderna and Pfizer are developing other vaccines that may require a booster shot down the line.”

Above, Chief Policy Officer Jessica Berg is flanked  by photos illustrating myriad service operations underway throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area provided by a legion of volunteers at The Society of St. Vincent De Paul.

A long haul for all

Across the Valley of the Sun, one organization that touches thousands of lives in a positive way — offering respite for the mind, body, and soul with locations throughout Arizona — is the Society of St. Vincent De Paul.

About 85 satellite sites, officials report, are apart from the established brick-and-mortar locations owned and operated by the Catholic Diocese.

“Those in need are really folks who are experiencing homelessness — there are so many pieces of it, that we serve the whole person,” said Chief Program Officer Jessica Berg. “The other half is about giving the community the opportunity to serve. We are the society of all being in this together.”

St. Vincent de Paul has assisted central and northern Arizona families since 1946. It operates a network of more than 80 neighborhood food pantries, five charity dining rooms, a transitional shelter, a resource center for the homeless, bill assistance and homelessness prevention programming, as well as a charity clinic with medical, dental and wellness care for the uninsured.

When asked how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting services at St. Vincent De Paul, Ms. Berg points to the emergence of folks seeking homeless prevention program services.

“That is huge, and the stories are so much more similar than they used to be,” she said pointing out those who gave are now in need.

“It is really the cost of rent or the utilities. Losing jobs to COVID or losing shifts is a very familiar scenario. Some of these folks are those who own their own businesses and they are just shocked by the level of need they are in. We have also seen some different patterns in the need of the dining rooms as those numbers have gone up and down with the peaks of COVID in our community.”

Ms. Berg explains homeless prevention is requiring a doubling of staff to meet the spike in cases.

“We have to hire more people in that department. That department has nearly doubled in scope and the amount of money invested has also increased. That is where we have seen the most shift of need,” she said.

“The eviction moratorium is set to expire at the end of March. We expect our numbers to go up even further. Some landlords are still giving eviction notices but a lot are holding out.”

Among other organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit, St. Vincent De Paul has found ways to pivot certain operations and services to a digital landscape, Ms, Berg says.

“I don’t know our footprint has changed but the services have shifted,” she explained. “We are doing a lot telephonically. We are all learning technology and figuring this out. For those who are still on the street, we are still serving them.”

In the spirit of community service, Ms. Berg explains, St. Vincent De Paul is providing COVID-19 testing at certain locations but plans are in the works to begin administering vaccinations.

“Circle the City is the main provider and they have been doing testing and our locations, they have come to our traditional housing facility,” she said of the downtown Phoenix site. “We are trying to provide as much education about the vaccinations as we can. Also, our medical clinic is working to become a vaccine provider at some locations. We look forward to being to able to provide vaccinations to the people of our communities.”

At First Things First, data-informed decisions offer realtime analysis of the needs of children, parents --- and during the time of the novel coronarvirus --- up-to-date evaluations of the overall Arizona childcare industry.

A critical piece of modern economics

Liz Barker Alvarez, First Things First chief policy adviser, says her No. 1 priority is working to make sure the Arizona child care infrastructure — daycare, pre-schools, and similar — survives the time of the novel coronavirus.

“With parents working from home, they are around their children so much more,” Ms. Alvarez said. “It creates an enormous amount of stress. We find ourselves in such unchartered territory, and that creates the need for more information.”

Aside from the day-to-day stress of new working environments, the impact the pandemic has had on the local child care industry has been devastating, Ms. Alvarez reports.

“When COVID hit, half the providers in the state closed down,” she pointed out. “Many of them are facing incredible challenges — they have lost more than half of their enrollment across the board.”

Ms. Alvarez explains when the pandemic hit it exacerbated an already troubling trend.

“Before COVID-19 hit we had a childcare crisis in Arizona,” she said. “About 48% of Arizona children live in a child care desert: A census tract where there is no provider. We already had a lack of child care to meet the need to begin with.”

Ms. Alvarez says the economic impact on Arizona families has been dramatic.

“Your operational costs are just going through the roof,” she said of operations that could withstand the economic blow. “Many programs just closed for a little, but many of them didn’t reopen because of how much more it was going to cost to serve children.”

Ms. Alvarez outlined CARES act funding during the past 12 months illustrating how essential those dollars have been to the childcare industry.

“In terms of early learning — a lot of those questions are still up in the air,” she said in reply to being asked what long-term effects could look like. “A lot human services are asking themselves these questions.”

A common theme regarding data points amid the COVID-19 pandemic is it is too early to tell much of anything, experts say because of the enormous swings of information.

“We may not see the learning gaps not materializing for a few years,” Ms. Alvarez said of the critical time between birth and 5 years old for brain development. That is why it is so important to maintain the infrastructure to utilize services during this tough time.”