COVID-19 Daily News Digest – July 6, 2020
Barkerville apologizes for ad ‘making light’ of epidemic that devastated First Nations
The ad caught the attention of several historians and archaeologist Joanne Hamond, who took to social media on Friday pointing out that “in 1862-3, a smallpox epidemic spread by miners bound for the Cariboo killed over 60 per cent of Indigenous people in B.C., making way for the settlement and exploitation of unceded lands that continues today.
Luxury fishing lodge plans to reopen despite Haida Nation’s COVID-19 precautions
Edgars sent CTV News Vancouver a copy of the letter he delivered to the lodge on Saturday. The letter asks the lodge to respond to the Council of the Haida Nation regarding whether the lodge plans to reopen on July 10. It says the “current state of emergency does not permit reopening Haida Gwaii to any non-essential travel, including the operation of fishing lodges.”
Edgars said Queen Charlotte Lodge, which advertises itself as a “luxury fishing lodge,” typically hosts many visitors from the United States, where COVID-19 cases have kept on rising to alarming levels. He said there continues to be concern about how Haida Gwaii would handle a COVID-19 outbreak.
Latin America sees half of all new Covid-19 infections as health systems flounder
In the last week of June, coronavirus deaths averaged more than 2,000 a day in Latin America and the Caribbean — half of all recorded deaths worldwide, according to a CNN tally of WHO data. Most forecasts suggest the picture will get much grimmer — with nearly 440,000 deaths expected across the region by October, according to the University of Washington.
Ottawa Public Health launches resource page for First Nations, Inuit and Métis people
The page includes links to resources about COVID-19, grocery shopping and cooking, mental health, and parenting and pregnancy. Many are available in a variety of Indigenous languages, including Algonquin, Inuktitut, Michif, Cree, Ojibwe, Mi’kmaq, and Oji-Cree, as well as English and French.