COVID-19 Daily News Digest – November 20, 2020
Saddle Lake begins two-week shutdown, Hinshaw continues to plead with Albertans
“Throughout the past few weeks SLCN has experienced a significant increase of COVID-19 cases. We all have a responsibility to prevent the increase of this very contagious virus, by taking all public health measures seriously,” reads information from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Emergency Management Group.
Only essential services such as water, sewer and garbage are open. COVID testing, contact tracing, referral, medical and home care services are being limited and kept to high needs situations only.
COVID-19 cases soar in Brazil’s largest indigenous reservation
The Yanomami’s territory, which is also home to 600 Ye’kwana people, is the largest indigenous reservation in Brazil. It is threatened by swarms of illegal gold miners who have invaded their lands bordering Venezuela and are thought to be a major contagion risk. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the reservation have risen some 260% between August and October, said the report, released on Thursday by the Yanomami and Ye’kwana Leadership Forum.
Nearly 100 new COVID-19 cases identified among Manitoba’s First Nations people
According to the numbers announced on Thursday, 24 of these cases are on-reserve and 71 cases are off-reserve, which brings the total number of active cases to 1,338. The PRCT said 66 people are currently in hospital, with 16 in the ICU.
Trans Mountain expansion project has been a COVID-free zone, says CEO
When the pandemic began, many feared that major resource projects like the Trans Mountain expansion could become vectors for the novel coronavirus in remote and Indigenous communities.
In a public update issued this week, Trans Mountain president and CEO Ian Anderson said that, as of the end of September, the company had spent an additional $1.2 million on pandemic safety measures such as regular temperature checks, personal protective equipment, new hygiene practices and workplace adjustments to allow for physical distancing.
So far, he said, those measures have paid off.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-mountain-covid-coronavirus-pandemic-1.5807758
Twenty Years of Online Classrooms Prior to Covid-19 Canada’s First E-Learning School for Indigenous Students Began in 2000
“Education is something as a society we have the opportunity to get right, and it should be everyone’s right to have that opportunity,” says CEO Martin Sacher. He worked in public high schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan for 22 years before launching the school.
Partnering with his wife Mavis Sacher, whose background includes a Masters degree in Educational Technology, the couple created Canada’s first online school tailored to Indigenous Learners. Course contents are culturally sensitive to Indigenous backgrounds, while flexibility in enrollments and extended completion periods allow students to work according to their own pace.
“When we started 20 years ago, it was such an out of the box idea but reserve communities embraced online learning and now it is mainstream today,” says Mavis Sache
Local area First Nations trying to contain COVID-19
Contact tracing has been initiated and those exposed are being notified and monitored by community health nurses.
The situation is similar on Saulteaux First Nation which on Nov. 18 announced two more new cases, bringing their active cases up to four. Those individuals have been self isolating.
Military sent to Opaskwayak Cree Nation after every resident at care home contracts COVID-19
The military is there to assess the situation and meet with medical staff, and are “getting an idea of exactly what will be required once they exhaust all the [health-care] resources within the region,” he said.
Opaskwayak reported nine new infections Thursday for a total of 77 active cases in the community, which has about 3,000 members living on-reserve.