OHSWEKEN — Six Nations of the Grand River revealed a new tiered response system for COVID-19 restrictions on Tuesday, saying it holds more strict measures than the provinces newly released colour coded system.
The framework identifies Green Level 1 the lowest risk level of transmission, to Black level 5 with the highest risk level of transmitting COVID.
The Six Nations Emergency Response Group says the new system is one part of the community’s overall Recovery Plan and was approved by SNGR Elected Council to implement immediately.
Formerly the ECG was implementing a staged and numbered system that saw Six Nations in Stage 2.5, which was a tougher version of the provinces’ Stage 2 reopening system.
Now, Six Nations ECG has identified the community to be in the Yellow alert level.
“The Six Nations specific system is very similar to the Province of Ontario’s COVID-19 Response Framework, in that we are using a coloured system to indicate which level of Alert we should be in,” says a statement from SNGR. “With the only difference in colour scheme being Six Nations chose to use the colour black, whereas Ontario is utilizing grey.”
“We chose to go with the colour black for the highest level, as the colour not only enhances the strong messaging around lock down, the colour also holds emotional ties that are serious and stern,” said Director of Health Services Lori Davis Hill, “As well this allows Six Nations to position itself in a unique, yet similar manner to the province’s current COVID-19 Response Framework.”
Officials say the new standards take into consideration that Six Nations community members are at an increased risk for contracting the coronavirus due to the communities socio-economic and health risks.
Status assessments will be done weekly to determine if the community needs to move up to the next alert level or if it can go back to a lighter stage of restrictions.
Officials say that Six Nations will not necessarily match the risk alert level issued in surrounding communities but say the alert level in surrounding communities still affects Six Nations members and will be factored into assessments going forward.
“This is because we rely on many services in the surrounding area such as grocery stores and hospitals,” said SNGR. “Community members, businesses and organizations should also look at the details of the Alert Level system because the measures are different than the provincial standards. We felt it was important to create our own measures and standards for restrictions that are specific to the needs of our community.”
SNGR said, “The community needs to understand that as long as we are in a pandemic, we need to be in a heightened alert mode. There are times where our level of alert will be higher and that’s because the risk is higher, but we should always be on alert. Six Nations members should avoid areas that are at higher risk whenever possible.”
The alerts can be found at www.sixnationscovid19.ca
