The reaction of homeless people to COVID-19 and their perception about government and civil society actions in the fight against the pandemic in the city of Ribeirão Preto, SP

Abstract

The measures of social distance adopted by the governments, due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, have considerable impact on everyday actions and on the quality of life of the brazilian population. Vulnerable populations, like the homeless people, however, present a worsening of this impact, due to the extreme poverty and the precarious housing and hygiene situations, that make it difficult to adopt the measures of isolation and detachment. Nowadays, there is not enough scientific literature to analyse the impact and the controlling of the pandemic in these populations. Thus, the goal of this research is to analyse the reaction of homeless people to COVID-19 and their perception about government and civil society actions in the fight against the pandemic in the city of Ribeirão Preto-SP. It will be developed a quantitative and qualitative survey study, whose quantitative section will be done by the application of a adapted version of the Social Thermometer questionnaire and the qualitative section will be accomplished through semi-structured interviews. The participants of the study will be the homeless people present in public places or in shelters in the city of Ribeirão Preto-SP, Brazil. To analyze the data, statistical and inferential techniques will be applied for quantitative data and Bardin's content analysis for qualitative data. As a result, this work is expected to provide useful data to the governmental spheres (federal, state and municipal) and to the active services during the pandemic in order to guide public policies and future emergency and long-term actions. (AU)