OHSWEKEN — Six Nations is reporting vaccination rates that are nearly 20% lower than the rest of the province.
According to Six Nations epidemiologists, out of the 12,788 on-reserve resident band members, around 11,500 of whom are of age to get the vaccine. So far Six Nations health officials say a total of 7,398 people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
For fully vaccinated on-reserve resident band members the total is 7,030 people or about 54%.
There are approximately 1277 youth on Six Nations under the age of 12, according to the community’s residency statistics from 2019.
This means there are potentially 4000 on-reserve band members eligible for the vaccine who have not been vaccinated — or 30% of eligible residents.
Currently there are 33 active COVID-19 cases on the territory with 179 people in isolation. One person remains in hospital.
Of those active cases 27%, or nine total cases, are listed as being confirmed Delta variant cases.
In the last 7 days Six Nations has had 38 confirmed COVID-19 infections bringing the per 100,000 rate up to 258.05, making this fourth wave outbreak the highest in the province.
Six Nations will be moving into ORANGE alert level in an effort to curb the outbreak. The shift in levels will restrict indoor dining and reduce indoor gatherings to no more than 10 people and takes effect on Monday.
Elected Council is urging all residents 12 and over to get vaccinated immediately.
As previously reported Six Nations now has five times the infection rate of the city of Hamilton and eight times the infection rate of Brantford-Brant.
To calculate the daily rate of new infections, researchers look at the average number of newly confirmed cases in the last 7 days per 100,000 residents.
This calculation allows health officials to level and compare large cities to smaller towns, giving an equal analysis and gives a better indication of how the virus is spreading in the area.
In theory, the assumption is that a larger county would be expected to have more cases. However at Six Nations, that is not the case.
The per 100,000 infection rate is calculated by taking the number of cases, divided by the total number of people in that population, multiplied by 100,000.
Provincially, when Ontario sees 40 cases per 100,000 they enter into Red alert level. If transmission levels continue to rise after a Red level alert is implemented, the province then moves into lockdown.
Six Nations is currently reporting 258.05 cases per 100,000 people — more than six times the provincial threshold for imposing a lockdown.
TRT reached out to SNGR for comment on why they have decided to move the community to Orange alert status and what the recommendation of the COVID Task Force was prior to the alert status changing.
