LORINC: How over-crowding has made housing lethal during pandemic There were so many truly awful details about the death, from COVID-19, of 13-year-old Emily Victoria Viegas — Brampton’s wall-to-wall hotspots, the lack of vaccination clinics, the over-burdened hospitals — but one in particular jumped out at me: the family’s cramped apartment, and its enabling role in this tragedy. Like so many working class and newcomer families, Emily, her brother, and her parents lived in a space that puts the lie to all the insistent public health rhetoric about social distancing. Once the virus got through the front door, there was no place to hide — no basement guest room, no cottage, no spare bedroom. They were sitting ducks.