Norway House Cree Nation calls for help as COVID-19 cases climb

The chief of a northern Manitoba First Nation is asking the federal and provincial governments for help as his community battles an outbreak of COVID-19.

Norway House Cree Nation has 109 active cases of the coronavirus as of Saturday, and despite all the best efforts of community leadership and health-care workers, more help is needed, Chief Larson Anderson said in a news release on Monday.

"We need a team that will come in to assist with the contact tracing and testing. Our teams are exhausted and burnt out," he said.

The community, which is about 510 kilometres north of Winnipeg, has already introduced a number of restrictions, including implementing a lockdown, closing the schooland shuttering everything but essential businesses.

The biggest problem is overcrowded housing, Anderson said.

One home with 15 people had 12 positive cases, he said.

The local hotel, the York Boat Inn, is being used as an isolation centre, while people with underlying health conditions are staying at the First Nation's treatment access centre in Winnipeg for their safety. Both locations are already full.

"We have managed to look after ourselves with our own nursing staff and testing team. We installed a mobile testing team as well as a surveillance testing team. However, there comes a time when we just need relief from outside," Anderson said.

So far, the process of sending Norway House members to alternative isolation accommodations in Winnipeg has been difficult, the chief said.

"Where one community was able to get aircrafts five times a day for their people, we are lucky to get two in one week," he said. They aren't well organized and people have to wait a long time to board, he said.

Anderson said he's meeting withChief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin and Dr.Marcia Anderson, the public health lead for the Manitoba First Nations pandemic co-ordination team.

He wants to discuss bringing the First Nation into the redor critical level on the province's colour-coded pandemic response system.

There are currently 377 active COVID-19 cases in the Northern Health Region, the province's online data dashboard says.