Indian Country already has some of the highest rates of illness in the nation. Can it withstand COVID-19?

Indian Country in America has long been described, despairingly, as a “developing nation” — a place not unlike remote parts of Africa or Asia, where survival is a daily struggle. Today, amid the coronavirus pandemic, there are fears that the struggle will be lost.

There is no question among public health experts that Native Americans are among those most vulnerable to the disease, owing to generations of inadequate healthcare, grinding poverty, and a chronic lack of safe drinking water and healthy food, among other essentials. Up to a third of homes on tribal lands in New Mexico and across the country have no electricity or indoor toilets, according to federal government reports. Large extended families are crammed into single-wide trailers, which make social distancing an impossibility.

https://www.searchlightnm.org/no-defenses