Hope and pray that we make it through’: COVID-19 underscores vulnerability of remote communities – U of T News

Donny Morris faced an extra hurdle as he raced to keep his tiny, fly-in community safe, healthy and stocked with crucial supplies in the face of the COVID-19 crisis: an unusually warm winter and an early closure for a 700-kilometre ice road in northern Ontario.

Morris (left) is chief of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) Reserve, an Oji-Cree community of 1,700 people nestled on the shores of Big Trout Lake, 580 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont. His leadership is vital to keeping the novel coronavirus out of the community, while ensuring members of KI have enough supplies to get them through the months ahead.

“We’re busy suspending operations and planning to deal with this virus if it comes,” says Morris. “Everybody is hunkered down and taking precautionary measures.”

Life on a remote reserve presents unique challenges in preventing and coping with the virus if it arrives. Basic preventative measures like hand washing are more difficult in communities under boil water advisories. Physical distancing is also a challenge where a mix of poor housing conditions and multi-generational families mean more than a dozen people may live under the same roof. In addition, many families have recently welcomed teens back from Ontario high schools in Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout, putting extra pressure on those households.

Read More: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/hope-and-pray-we-make-it-through-covid-19-underscores-vulnerability-remote-communities

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