High Rates Of COVID Among Pacific Islanders Spur Community Solutions
Speaker 1: 00:00 Cases of COVID-19 are going up around California with people of color bearing a burden of deaths, a close look at state data show. The disease is most prevalent among Pacific Islanders and native Hawaiians cap radios. Pauline Barcelona has more about how that community in Sacramento is trying to bring infections down. When Katherine OFA man first came down with COVID in June. She felt like she just needed a little rest and water. She had a small cough, but breathing was hard. The doctor, the urchin kid took one look and he said, Oh my goodness, do you need the, um, oxygen? I says, yes, I need oxygen. I'm here to give him an inhaler because, uh, I think I have bronchitis. And he said, I would like to send you to the hospital man, tested positive and spent a couple of days in the hospital. She grew up on the Island nation of Tonga, a short plane ride from New Zealand, and now runs an organization that serves specific Islanders. Speaker 1: 01:05 She says recently her community members have been falling ill to COVID and some of them are dying. Families don't want to even talk about it. They don't want to even say that they have it and they take care of their own because they heard that people go to the hospital. They die, you know, they, they there's no medicine. Pacific Islanders are a small population in Sacramento County, roughly 20,000 people, but local and state data indicate the rate of COVID among them is higher than in whites, Latinos, blacks, and Asians. Dr. Ronald Samoa leads a national COVID task force for Pacific Islanders and says many of them are vulnerable because they're essential workers, Speaker 2: 01:47 Just like other communities of color. Uh, there's a significant percentage that live in multi-generational homes. And there's a lot of sort of crowding and not as stringent worker protections in the industries that are overrepresented by Pacific Islanders. Speaker 1: 02:04 Dr. Simoa says recently people have gotten sick by going to funerals for people who had COVID. He says the pandemic is tough for Pacific Islanders who have strong community ties, but they're working with families to keep culture strong and stay safe. Speaker 2: 02:20 The Pacific way is when there's adversity, um, that we show up for each other. That's the underlying value that we should hold true to. And that showing up for each other and looks different today that it looks like wearing a mask. Like it looks like reducing our physical contact Speaker 1: 02:39 Sacramento. Pacific Islanders are finding new ways to do that for each other. Thank you both for joining us and thank you for all your details. Lisa have Foca Hoffa. Man's daughter runs an online program to educate people from oceanic nations, like Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. They make it fun by online quizzes, youth members of their organization take the lead. Speaker 3: 03:03 Okay. This one is most people who test positive for COVID-19 are only severely ill and that's true or false, false, false. The people that or reaching out to, we have a personal connection with we're all on the same cultural level. Some of us are language speaking and so meets people's understanding through language. It would probably mean more to them because it comes from someone like us. That's our presentation. So that's that part of your application done? Speaker 1: 03:38 Oh, Furman was back to work just a few weeks after testing positive for COVID. She is also educating Pacific Islanders about the disease. Speaker 3: 03:46 We want to empower them saying that for yourself so you can save others, not just yourself, but you can save them. Speaker 1: 03:56 The city of Sacramento funds the work using federal stimulus dollars. Organizers hope the COVID education will continue even when and if the vaccine becomes available. Speaker 3: 04:07 Yes, that's correct. Speaker 1: 04:09 I'm Pauline Bartolini in Sacramento. Speaker 3: 04:17 [inaudible].
