Canada's indigenous population faces elevated infection rate, lack of health care as COVID-19 runs

[TexasTowelie]

Canada’s indigenous population faces elevated infection rate, lack of health care as COVID-19 runs rampant


Health officials announced Canada’s first confirmed COVID-19 case on January 25, 2020. Thirteen months later, the country has reported over 850,000 cases and more than 21,800 deaths.

During the pandemic’s first wave last spring, infection rates among Indigenous people did not greatly exceed the national average, in part because many First Nations and the governments of the three northern territories imposed severe travel restrictions. But First Nations, Inuit and Métis people across Canada have been greatly impacted by the “second wave” of COVID-19 infections—a second wave that is entirely due to the ruling elite’s prioritizing of profits over lives, with their back-to-work and back-to-school drives.

Federal government figures show the number of COVID-19 infections on First Nation reserves has increased more than 10-fold since the end of October. More than 5 percent of those living on reserves have now had an official COVID-19 diagnosis since the pandemic began, more than double the percentage for Canadians as a whole.

Indigenous people across Canada face medical and social conditions—including grinding poverty, dilapidated housing, and inadequate access to health care—that place them at especially high risk for contracting the virus and transmitting it to others. When infected, they are often unable to obtain appropriate treatment and face higher mortality rates than the non-Indigenous population.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/26/cain-f26.html

[applegrove]

1. The elders have been proritized. Health care workers, designated caregivers,

residents of long term care homes, and indigenous elders have or are just about to be vaccinated. Thankfully the Moderna vaccine was available for indigenous communities as Pfizer could not be used due to storage concerns in remote locations. We have a ways to go. We gave up our home grown vaccine production around the time of free trade. We are dependant on the kindness of the US and the Europeans to get the vaccine. We are certainly luckier than less developed countries. And yes Trudeau has prioratized the sorry economic situation of many indigenous communities since he has been in power. No doubt it is a nightmare during Covid.

[abqtommy]

2. Thanks for this good news!

[applegrove]

3. It will be mid March before they start vaccinating by age here in Ontario.

We are behind the US in that regards. And yes the young and indigenous should be at the top of the list as they are often so far from hospitals.