Indigenous people and the COVID-19 pandemic: the tip of an iceberg of social and economic inequities

The outbreak of the novel COVID-19 that began in Wuhan, China, killed a Yanomami (an Amazonian tribe) adolescent on 9 April 2020, presumed to have been contracted from gold miners. Although the strong influence of environmental conditions such as place of residence and socioeconomic status on health or illness is irrefutable, scant attention is paid to the interconnectedness of people and how conditions that affect one group ultimately affect everyone globally. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder or wake-up call of how a more equitable distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels benefits all. Even though indigenous peoples and other socioeconomically disadvantaged communities will likely bear the brunt of the pandemic, no one will be spared its pervasive health, social, economic and political consequences. Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups who are the original or earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic area. They are a heterogeneous group with thousands of culturally distinct communities, and numbers approximating 370 million in over 90 countries.1 Indigenous peoples comprise about 2% of the US population (6.8 million), 5% of the Canada’s population (1.7 million), 3% of the Australia’s population (>750 000) and there are about 32 million in South America, the majority in Peru. The epidemiological and social-ecological models are useful for understanding the uneven and disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on indigenous populations. The pandemic …