Guest Column | We must show that we are better warriors than COVID-19

By Ethel Branch

In November I shared some hopeful news about measures that each of us can take to mitigate the impact of COVID in our community. The children’s vaccine, the booster and the monoclonal antibody treatment offer the potential to strengthen our defenses against COVID and provide an opportunity for us to move beyond the current bleak outlook of the pandemic.

However, I want to be clear that unless we collectively and aggressively pursue those measures as a cohesive unit, we will be in for a very long and dark winter where we can expect to continue losing our elders, knowledge keepers, culture bearers, and immunocompromised in the war against COVID.

We now have the emergence of a new Omicron variant that presents many unknowns. Will it cause more severe symptoms than the Delta variant? How well will vaccines stand up to it, if at all? Scientists are scrambling to find the answers to these questions.

Meanwhile, what we know about Omicron is that it spreads swiftly. Some scientists are saying it spreads twice as quickly as Delta and indeed we are seeing it rapidly gain ground across the globe.

Omicron was first named a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on Friday, Nov. 26. Within five days it was detected in the U.S. Six days after that it had spread to 20 states, including Utah. We can expect it to hit other Navajo Nation jurisdictions such as Arizona and New Mexico very soon.

Meanwhile we remain in a solid Delta surge on Navajo Nation.

In late October our weekly new case count more than tripled, leaping from a new high of 421 to an astounding 1,302. Thankfully our weekly case numbers dropped back down, but to a new high plateau averaging about 642 new cases per week.

Since Nov. 11 more than half of our 110 chapters have been experiencing the uncontrolled spread of COVID.

Collectively, we have not made enough progress considering that we’ve had access to COVID vaccines for almost a full year. As of Dec. 6, 2020, we had 17,867 confirmed cases of COVID. As of Dec. 6, 2021, that number more than doubled to 40,101 confirmed cases. These numbers exclude border town cases.

As of Nov. 23, 2020, we had 631 total confirmed COVID deaths on the Navajo Nation. As of Nov. 22, 2021, that number increased by a factor of 2.4 to 1,527 total confirmed deaths.

These numbers are not that surprising considering that only 58% of our population is fully vaccinated. If we look at the Delta surge in Europe, we can see that countries with equivalent vaccination rates, such as Saxony and Czech Republic, are experiencing about 500 new cases each week for every 100,000 residents.

If we apply their weekly contraction rate to our own population of 175,108 (as reported in our 2018 Comprehensive Economic Development Survey), we should expect to see 890 cases a week. We saw 740 new cases in the week ending Dec. 3. We’re not that far off the mark.

COVID is working hard to outmaneuver us with the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the waning efficacy of vaccines, and now the rapid emergence of the even more highly transmissible and mutated Omicron variant.

The swift adaptability of the virus makes it vital that we be even more vigilant and agile in our response to it. As new weapons against COVID emerge, we must learn about them quickly, and utilize them immediately.

To that end, the unvaccinated should get their first shots as soon as possible. Those already fully vaccinated – especially our elders and immunocompromised – should get their boosters right away.

Many of our people have been incredible in answering the call of duty to protect our people by quickly stepping forward in large numbers to get fully vaccinated. However, there are a good number of our people who remain unvaccinated.

Indeed, only 71% of our eligible population age 12 and over is fully vaccinated. We need to get this number as high as possible as quickly as possible to create a shield of protection around our Nation and our people.

Never before, except perhaps when we defended our Nation from the United States at the turn of the 20th century, has it been more important for our people to step forward to fulfill their duty to protect our beloved Navajo Nation and our most vulnerable and precious – our elders, children, healers, and bearers of our language and culture.

Please, if you haven’t already, do your part to embody the warriors whose blood flows through your veins and step forward to protect our Nation and our relatives by getting fully vaccinated and boosted as soon as you can, and do the same for your children ages 5 and up.

This will help us all emerge from this winter safer and stronger than ever.

Ethel Branch is interim executive director of the Navajo & Hopi Family COVID-19 Relief Fund and former attorney general for the Navajo Nation.

---