Elected council, public health 'extremely concerned' as cases surge in Six Nations

After a surge of COVID-19 cases emerged over the weekend, Six Nations of the Grand River is asking its members to stay home unless it's absolutely necessary to go out.

Six Nations currently has 116active cases of COVID-19 within the community, the most number of active cases within the territory since the beginning of the pandemic.

On Friday, the community reported 79 active cases of COVID-19, after only having 37 active cases on Thursday.

"Our healthcare workers are overwhelmed. They are working diligently to keep our community safe, perform an increasing amount of COVID-19 tests, and conduct contact tracing. We owe it to them to follow public health guidelines to prevent any further spread of COVID-19 within the community," said a Six Nations Health Services news release.

It said the elected council, as well as Ohsweken Public Health, is "extremely concerned" about the rapid spread of the virus.

It saidif a community member iswaiting for results and hasbeen in contact with a positive case their entire household must isolatethemselves as well.

Six Nations has been in Alert Level Black since January, which means no private gatherings with anyone outside of their immediate household, staying home and leaving only for essential purposes, and restaurants and retails services offer take-out of curbside pickup, said the news release.

"Our community is home to a large population of elders and people with underlying health conditions. Each of us needs to be doing our part to protect these populations, ourselves, and others from COVID-19," it said.

"Six Nations Elected Council recognizes that we have been fighting this virus for almost a year and that the community is tired. We all need to come together to contain and defeat this virus so that we may gather once again."

It encouraged members that may be experiencing symptoms or have potentially come into contact with a positive case to book a test at the Community Assessment Centre online or call 1-855-977-7737 or 226-446-9909.