Jovelle Tamayo reports for The Washington Post: Conditions in Indian Country are ripe for a rapid spread of the coronavirus. Rate of infection among Navajos is a major concern.
The Lummi Tribal Health Center in Washington state is bracing for the deadly coronavirus.
They hastily piled all the dumbbells and treadmills in the back of a gym to make room for 23 extra hospital beds. The beds aren’t needed yet, but on a reservation where residents suffer high rates of diseases that exist throughout Indian Country, the Lummi Tribal Health Clinic is taking every precaution to prepare for the deadly coronavirus.
Two thousand miles away at the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, where 11 people have tested positive for the virus as of Friday and one has died, Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said: “We’re preparing for the worst." Health workers plan to move hospital beds into a nearby university and a job-training facility shuttered because of the pandemic. “This is the worse public health crisis we’ve had in a generation.”
"We could get wiped out": American Indians have the highest rates of diseases that make covid-19 more lethal.
Indian Country News Log
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