Australia reached a tragic milestone on August 29, 2021, with the first COVID-19 death among the First Nations people.
Since then, the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant has infected First Nations people at twice the rate of other Australians. By mid-October 2021, there were an additional 12 deaths, more than 4500 cases, and 550 hospitalised among the First Nations people.
A major concern is that Australia’s states and territories will emerge from lockdown, with the expected surge in cases, when only 47% of Indigenous people (over the age of 16) have received 2 doses of an mRNA vaccine.
Now, Indigenous communities face yet another challenge with the highly contagious Omicron variant circulating in the community, with cases already reported in remote communities in NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
One of the oldest living Indigenous cultures has been, over the past 233 years, disproportionately and harshly impacted by introduced infectious diseases which are, in comparison with the non-Indigenous population, more often fatal to Australia’s First Nations people. The disparity in health outcomes is fundamentally determined for First Nations people in all Western countries by racial, social, and economic factors leading to population-level compromised health status, undermined immunity, and inequitable access to vaccines and quality health care.
The Northern Territory government has announced a ‘lockout’ until midday on Monday, but what more do we need to do to protect vulnerable First Nations communities?
Dr Lyndon Reilly from the School of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine & Health, UNSW Sydney is
