Canada’s Inuit leaders are nervously watching the coronavirus creep closer and closer, and hoping they can keep it from reaching their communities, where chronic overcrowding and a lack of medical resources make their people especially vulnerable to an outbreak.
Nunatsiavut, the Inuit self-governing region in northern Labrador, is one of the few places left in Canada without a confirmed case of COVID-19. People there are deeply concerned they would be ill-equipped to handle the virus if it arrives, and are worried it’s only a matter a time before they see their first case.
Chronic housing shortages have inflamed recent outbreaks of tuberculosis in the region, and throughout Canada’s North, and makes Labrador’s Inuit population more at risk to the COVID-19 virus because of TB’s lasting impact on the respiratory and immune systems.
We are not prepared is the blunt assessment of Johannes Lampe, president of Nunatsiavut, which includes the coastal communities of Hopedale, Makkovik, Postville, Rigolet and Nain.
When the Spanish influenza of 1918 came to Canada, it killed more than a third of Labrador’s Inuit population and wiped entire communities off the map. For some Inuit, that devastation is still very much a part of their collective memory.
A 2018 tuberculosis outbreak in his community infected more than 50 people, and claimed the life of a 14-year-old boy. The disease exposed Nain’s housing problems, including poor ventilation in many dwellings and multiple families living under one roof often sharing two- or three-bedroom homes.
The national organization that represents Inuit in Canada, meanwhile, wants air transportation to be designated an essential service during the pandemic. Flights across the North have already been dramatically cut back, with some routes completely suspended. In communities that can’t be reached by road or railway, those flights are critical links for food, medicine and other important supplies.
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