A city under siege: Chelsea has state's highest rate of coronavirus infection

With the state's highest rate of Covid-19 cases by far, where most people live in tightly packed multi-family homes - and where many residents are afraid to even go to the doctor because of their immigration status - officials in Chelsea pleaded today for more help from both state and federal officials.

With 387 confirmed cases, Chelsea now has a rate of 96 cases per 10,000 residents, according to City Councilor Judith Garcia. That compares to 12.7 in nearby Somerville. "That is scary," she said in an online group discussion with US Rep. Joe Kennedy III.

Garcia said Chelsea needs particular help from the state not just because of its high infection rate, but because it's a predominantly working-class community with a high concentration of minority and undocumented residents - which she and other officials said are connected. Many residents will not see those $1,200 checks from the federal government, but the high rate of infection alone should be enough to get the state to provide more aid to the city, she and City Council President Roy Avellaneda said.

"The housing part is the hardest part," Avellaneda said. As people's tests come back positive, they "need to be separated," but that's proving near impossible in a city of families, most in multi-family buildings. "Give us the power to commandeer a hotel and say we can take over that, because right now they're empty and not doing much business," he said.

And it's not just residents, he said. City police officers and firefighters are probably now responding to 10 Covid-19-related calls a day. With their risk of exposure so high, "I don't think it's fair for them to be sent home to their families," he said.

Avellaneda added that, unlike financially better off people in other communities, Chelsea's working-class residents had little choice but to keep going to jobs, even ones that put them at higher risk of contracting the virus, such as working at the nearby international airport. Current federal aid is coming too late to keep them from getting infected, he said.

Maria Belen Power, of the local environmental-justice group GreenRoots, said Chelsea residents, once they are infected, will fair worse, because they havve some of the highest hypertension, diabetes and respiratory-illness rates in the state - and such underlying conditions have been shown to make it harder on people who come down with a Covid-19 infection.

"This is what poverty looks like," she said. "Poor people are going to die in unprecedented numbers."