Australia’s Indigenous people face COVID crisis within a crisis

Cases have been reported in far west of New South Wales in Aboriginal communities already suffering from poor health.

As the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) battles to contain a third wave of COVID-19 that saw a record 681 new cases on Thursday, a crisis within a crisis is unfolding for Aboriginal people experiencing disproportionately higher rates of infection and hospital admission. A statewide lockdown was introduced last weekend after clusters of COVID-19 emerged in inland towns and remote rural communities in the west of the state, where one in four people identify as Indigenous. Some 300km (186 miles) west of Sydney, the sheep-grazing town of Dubbo that had been virtually untouched by the pandemic is now the epicentre of the western outbreak, with 167 active cases. Seven out of 10 of those diagnosed with the virus are Aboriginal people and nearly half of those are Aboriginal children and teenagers aged between 10 and 19.