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

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