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UCSF Sends Second Team of Health Workers to Support Navajo Nation

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With cases of COVID-19 continuing to mount in the Navajo Nation, a second team of UCSF health care workers were sent to Arizona on Thursday to help support regional hospitals serving infected Navajo patients.

The team — of 13 nurses and six doctors — will join an already established UCSF volunteer medical crew that has been working in Arizona and New Mexico for the last month.

Despite actions taken by Navajo Nation leaders to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including curfews and increased testing, positive cases continue to climb on the sprawling reservation that reaches into parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

With a population of about 175,000 people, the reservation now has the highest per-capita number of COVID-19 cases in the country, reporting 4,253 positive cases and 146 deaths as of May 20.

By comparison, San Francisco, with a population five times larger, has roughly half that many cases and a quarter the number of deaths.

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“Extensive public health efforts by Navajo Nation leaders have been complicated by a long history of poverty and neglect, including chronic understaffing and underfunding of the Native American healthcare system," Dr. Sriram Shamasunder, associate professor of medicine at UCSF, said in a press release.

— Laura Klivans (@lauraklivans

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