The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Navajo Nation jumped from three to 14 in just a day, tribal leadership said Thursday night.
“This is not a time for panic,” Vice President Myron Lizer said in a statement. “Although there is an increase in positive tests for COVID-19, there are also a large number of people who have tested negative and some who are recovering.”
The reservation counted three cases of illness caused by the novel coronavirus on Wednesday.
“I assure everyone that the Navajo Health Command Operations Center, Navajo Area IHS, and 638 Tribal Health Organizations are working proactively to investigate each case to prevent the spread of the virus,” President Jonathan Nez said in a statement.
The Navajo Health Command Operations Center issued a shelter-in-place rule for the village of Chilchinbeto, near the Kayenta Indian Health Services facility where officials say a bulk of the new cases are being treated.
The Navajo reservation covers an area roughly the size of West Virginia in the American Southwest, bordering Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. More than 173,000 people — Native and non-Native — lived on the reservation at the time of the 2010 Census.
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