Here's Why California's Immigrant Communities Need Coronavirus Information in Their Own Languages

“We have a request of having the website in Portuguese, we have a request to reach our migrant populations, our field workers. It’s a challenge because we don’t have Portuguese-speaking staff here,” Berber said.

Similar to MICOP’s work in Ventura County, community organizations in the Central Valley are also jumping in to supplement governmental efforts to reach immigrant communities during the pandemic.

“Access to everything is kind of gated by knowledge of English and access to the internet. So if you don’t have access to those, then how do you know? And how do you keep your family safe?” said Christine Barker, executive director of Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries, or FIRM, a faith-based nonprofit that serves the area’s refugee communities.

Barker said her group began working with the county after a FIRM staff member noticed that COVID-19 information in Hmong on the county health department’s website was poorly translated.

The health department is now using infographics in Hmong, which FIRM staff have assisted in translating, Berber said. But much of the multilingual information about COVID-19 on the website is still English run through Google Translate.

“Google Translate is not even good with European Romantic languages like Spanish. For a language like Punjabi, which doesn’t even use a Latin-based script, it is just a total disaster,” said Naindeep Singh, executive director of the Jakara Movement, a Sikh community organizing nonprofit that works throughout the state.

Singh said the Kern County Public Health Department recently reached out to his organization for help translating coronavirus information into Punjabi. The group had already begun building a relationship with county officials in response to a recent earthquake.

“That’s when groups were like, ‘Look at our emergency system here in Kern. We don’t even have it in different languages!’ And so obviously when this COVID-19 hit, they were already preparing and looking at it,” Singh said.

Barker and Singh both say the state’s efforts to get COVID-19 information out to non-English speakers also leaves room for improvement.

In the absence of a statewide system for disseminating information about COVID-19 in different languages, the quality and availability of materials varies widely from county to county. And that can have major impacts on populations that are already disenfranchised, said Cary Sanders, senior policy director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.

“In California, if you’re uninsured — and that can also include undocumented — you can still access free testing and treatment for COVID,” Sanders said. “You don’t need to get a referral from a primary care doctor. You can go straight to urgent care or the ER to get this testing. And yet one of the things that our partners have raised is: In certain counties, that’s not clear in some of the materials. So people are not getting tested or not inquiring about getting tested because they think they need to get a doctor’s referral.”

Translations Not Enough

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office recently released a guide for immigrants in English and Spanish. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said staff are working on translating the materials into Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Arabic, and working with community partners, elected officials, news organizations and social media to get the word out to immigrant communities. The spokesperson said those languages were chosen based on census data and California Department of Education enrollment data.

But advocates say immigrant communities don’t just need translated guidance about the virus. They need to get the answers to their own questions about how to cope and how to access resources during the pandemic.

“Many of these people that are giving out information in Spanish, may not be listening to what the community is going through,” said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas.

“Even public officials have gotten into radio spots to give an announcement saying, ‘We’re here for you, we’re giving out information, go to this place.’ ... But they’re not getting information from the people themselves saying, ‘These are the problems we’re having to get to where the clinics are, to get to where the services are.’ ” said Treviño-Sauceda. “Most of the workers are working more hours and by the time they get off, places are closed. Or the merchandise or whatever is given out. And by the time that farmworkers try to arrive, there’s nothing for them.”

Flores-Haro is working to get answers to the questions raised by her Radio Indígena listeners.

“One thing that I still don’t have an answer for: What are the recommendations for someone to social distance when maybe it’s a whole family in a room, right? And there’s multiple families in a house,” Flores-Haro said.

She said her biggest challenge is deciding what information is the most important for people to know at a time when the deluge of information about the novel coronavirus is constantly changing.

Because COVID-19 is so contagious, said Singh, it’s in the interest of everyone that all communities have access to information they understand to prevent the spread of the disease. Breakdowns in communication can have dire consequences, he said.

According to Singh, the mother of a family that recently arrived in the Central Valley after flying from Punjab, India, went to a local hospital for a coronavirus test, but she didn’t have someone with her who could translate between English and Punjabi. When hospital staff sent her home after the test, she thought it meant that she was negative. But four days later, she learned otherwise.

“She got the call to tell her she was COVID-positive,” Singh said. “She ended up exposing her family. And her son ended up getting tested positive for COVID as well. So really making sure that all communities are getting the right information, it’s really imperative for the safety of the individual, the families and our entire community.”

Wildfires Exposed Flaws in Emergency Notification System

The ability of California’s state agencies to notify immigrant communities about emergency situations was put to the test during recent wildfire seasons.

A December 2019 audit examined government responses to the 2018 Camp Fire, the 2017 Sonoma Complex Fires and the 2017 Thomas Fire. It found that none of the counties impacted had issued evacuation warnings in languages other than English.