The Van Ness Days Inn is no longer a DC Covid-19 quarantine site

The District is no longer using the Days Inn at 4400 Connecticut Avenue to quarantine people who don’t have another place to recuperate from Covid-19 or await test results.

The hotel’s management company, Coakley and Williams, tells Forest Hills Connection that it will be reopening to guests this Friday, July 10th.

“We have been taking this short time to train our Staff, transition, clean, sanitize, and make sure that the hotel is Guest Ready for our re-opening date of July 10,” Jamie Howser, Coakley and Williams’ vice president of operations, wrote in an email.

We asked when the Days Inn stopped being used as an isolation site. Howser did not answer the question, but it has been at least two weeks. NBC4 reporter Mark Segraves tweeted on June 22nd that the Days Inn was no longer in use. We could find no subsequent report with more information.

The Days Inn was one of five DC hotels contracted in early April to shelter the homeless and others who did not have a place to isolate themselves while recovering from Covid-19, or waiting to learn whether they had the illness. But the District did not inform the community, neighborhood leaders or Council members until NBC4’s Segraves reported on the Days Inn site on April 19th. He found what appeared to be a worker leaving and returning to the hotel in PPE, and overflowing dumpsters out back.

Then, at the April 21st ANC 3F meeting, Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh questioned Chris Geldart, the incident command lead for the District’s Covid-19 response, about safety and lack of transparency during the April 21st ANC 3F meeting. Geldart promised he’d address concerns about staff training and trash pickup.

He also said the District was lucky that the Van Ness Days Inn was among the hotels willing to help. “Not all are like that,” Geldart said.

Howser, in his email to the Connection, doesn’t rule out returning to quarantine use.

“As the District continues its phased re-opening, the use of hotels to support residents in need of a safe space to isolate and quarantine has decreased…. However, an important component of the District’s re-opening is the ability to provide these services and bring isolation and quarantine sites back online as needed to help protect the community throughout the public health emergency.”