Health

The Team Rubicon Greyshirts, like Alicia Fields, love serving the Diné people with nursing care and have been volunteering on the frontlines since the COVID-19 pandemic began its surge across the Navajo Nation.

The big news on the COVID-19 front this week was that a more contagious variant could threaten another surge in infections by spring, and that vaccinated persons can still be asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

It was April of last year when Francisco stood outside GIMC’s ICU door, clad in full protective clothing, breathing heavily. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before entering the room. “I had to take a deep breath and reassure myself and tell myself, ‘I can do this. I am here to help and to stabilize a patient.’”

Retired Navajo Transit driver Benjamin Henio, 70, who also worked for Kerr-McGee, the former uranium mining company, “for many years,” said he wouldn’t have a chance against COVID-19 if he were to get it. There was no second-guessing about whether he should get the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.