HHS: Nearly 40 Migrant Children Test Positive for Coronavirus at Chicago Shelter

China’s Wuhan virus has spread to almost 40 migrant youths and children who are being sheltered by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to news services.

“On Tuesday, Heartland [Human Care Services] officials said that the number of immigrant children in their care who had tested positive for COVID-19 had nearly doubled, from 19 to 37,” said a report in ProPublica, a donor-support news service. The report continued:

Of those, 28 were asymptomatic at the time of the testing, the agency said. “To our knowledge, there’s not an increase in staff cases,” a spokeswoman for the organization said. “We are working hard to obtain testing for staff, too.”

The Heartland group is one of several groups that operate shelters for migrant youths and children, under contracts from DHHS.

The report did not say any of the children were harmed by the disease. Worldwide, governments report that very few children have been sickened or killed by the disease that escaped from China.

The ProPublica site also reported that officials in HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement said that “there were also 39 ‘self-reports’ of positive COVID-19 tests among personnel affiliated with shelter programs in six states.”

More