Coronavirus: Rough sleepers in Brighton hotels to be offered HIV tests

Thousands of homeless people were taken into hotels and B&Bs as the country went into lockdown

Rough sleepers living in Brighton hotels due to the coronavirus pandemic are to be offered hepatitis and HIV tests.

About 200 people in three hotels will be offered a test.

Councils were told to move homeless people off the streets and out of communal shelters in March.

HIV charity the Martin Fisher Foundation said it had created a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to reach out to this hard-to-find group”.

The charity said about 200 homeless people living in the Britannia, the King’s and the Brighton hotels would be offered a “simple” finger-prick test and given a £5 food voucher for their time.

'Unique opportunity'

Dr Gillian Dean, a trustee of the Martin Fisher Foundation, said that knowing where these people were living would improve chances of linking those testing positive to treatment.

Outreach workers from the NHS, the Terence Higgins Trust and St Mungo’s will go into the hotels to offer HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C tests using dried blood spot sampling (DBS).

About 200 homeless people in Brighton will be offered the tests

The foundation said it was the "preferred testing method" and gave "highly accurate" results.

It said the HIV virus could now be controlled and not passed on by taking as "few as one tablet a day".

It added that hepatitis C was now “completely curable” with one tablet a day for up to 12 weeks.

Marc Tweed, centre manager at the Brighton Terence Higgins Trust, said: “It’s vital that during the Covid-19 pandemic we don’t forget about other viruses.”

Dr Jaime Vera, consultant HIV physician at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital, said it was a “unique opportunity to engage with a group that struggle to access testing”.