An Apache Tribe ’s Innovative COVID-19 Contact Tracing Model Saved Lives. It Could Work Elsewhere Too.

After performing funeral rites for 40 of his neighbors, Gary Lupe tested positive for COVID-19 in October. Lupe, a 56-year-old minister on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz., had spent the previous months in quiet expectation despite being vaccinated in January. On Oct. 10, as he was experiencing flu-like symptoms, a nurse at the nearby Indian Health Services (IHS) ordered Lupe to its emergency room, as his wife Berlita and their six kids immediately began quarantining. Lupe received Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment without hesitation: IHS, he says, was to be trusted. “They were (always) very respectful,” Lupe recalled. “They understood that we were facing something no one understands.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The reservation has 18,000 residents, and Lupe is part of the 29% that tested positive for the coronavirus in the past 18 months. His recovery is the byproduct of a novel approach to contact tracing and testing that’s being developed entirely on this dedicated White Mountain land three hours east of Phoenix. In a report published Oct. 14 in the American Journal of Public Health, a consortium of 10 white and indigenous health specialists proved that by sending multidisciplinary teams of field nurses—trained to swab nostrils and take blood-oxygen levels—to Apache homes, they preemptively kept COVID-19 deaths to a minimum. The model is a plausible substitute to the U.S.&rsquo...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news