Residents, including Chief Wilfred King, far right, stand at a checkpoint restricting access to their community to slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in their remote First Nations community of Gull Bay, Ontario, Canada April 27, 2020. PHOTO BY DAVID JACKSON /Reuters PNimg
Article content
If Canada’s Indigenous population was its own nation, it would rank five spots ahead of Canada on Bloomberg’s world vaccine tracker, which compares countries based on how many doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have been administered per 100 people.
That’s how successful the vaccination program has been in northern and remote Indigenous communities that have been prioritized in the rollout, despite the unique challenges of isolation and a history of vaccine hesitancy born of a mistrust of Canadian health care.