Virus rampages across vast Navajo lands, close-knit families [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Felicia Fonseca and Tim Sullivan, Associated Press Updated 11:44 am CDT, Monday, May 11, 2020

TUBA CITY, Arizona (AP) — The virus arrived on the reservation in early March, when late winter winds were still blowing off the mesas and temperatures at dawn were often barely above freezing.

It was carried in from Tucson, doctors say, by a man who had been to a basketball tournament and then made the long drive back to a small town in the Navajo highlands. There, believers were preparing to gather in a small, metal-walled church with a battered white bell and crucifixes on the window.

On a dirt road at the edge of the town, a hand-painted sign with red letters points the way: “Chilchinbeto Church of the Nazarene.”

From that church, COVID-19 took hold on the Navajo Nation, hopscotching across families and clans and churches and towns, and leaving the reservation with some of the highest infection rates in the U.S.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Virus-rampages-across-vast-Navajo-lands-15261353.php