Remote Alaska Villages Isolate Themselves Further in Effort to Shield Against Coronavirus

[Judi Lynn]

Alaskan communities that are accessible only by plane or snowmobile are cutting off the outside world in response to COVID-19 rather than risk elders’ lives.

by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News March 22, 5 a.m. EDT



Nulato, a village in Alaska, suspended passenger flights except in the case of medical emergencies in the hopes of delaying the arrival of the coronavirus. (Bob Hallinen/Anchorage Daily News)


Most small Alaska villages can be reached only by plane or snowmobile. Many still harbor the intergenerational scars from previous epidemics of influenza, smallpox and tuberculosis, all of which killed thousands of Alaska Natives.

Now, some of those villages are choosing to further isolate themselves in hopes of delaying the arrival of the coronavirus, tribal and village leaders say.

As of Friday, a number of villages said they were banning outright all nonemergency travel to and from their tiny, farflung communities. Others were asking that any visitors who might try to land via small propeller planes in the communities of 100 to 500 people first seek tribal permission.

“It’s scary,” said Jo Malamute, acting city administrator in the Yukon River village of Koyukuk, some 350 miles northwest of Anchorage. Tribal members met last week and decided to stop passenger travel to and from the village by planes and snowmobiles, she said.

More:
https://www.propublica.org/article/remote-alaska-villages-isolate-themselves-further-in-effort-to-shield-against-coronavirus