BABB, Montana (AP) — On a cloudy spring day [last month], hundreds lined up in their cars on the Canadian side of the [Piegan-Carway ] border crossing that separates Alberta and Montana. They had driven for hours and camped out in their vehicles in hopes of receiving... a COVID-19 vaccine — from a Native American tribe … giving out its excess doses.
The Blackfeet tribe in northern Montana provided about 1000 surplus vaccines ... to its First Nations relatives and others across the border …
Among those who received the vaccine ...were Sherry Cross Child and Shane Little Bear of Stand Off, Alberta, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north … They recited a prayer in the Blackfoot language before nurses began administering shots, with Chief Mountain — sacred to the Blackfoot people — rising in the distance. The prayer was dedicated to people seeking refuge from the virus, Cross Child said. [She] and her husband have family and friends in Montana but have not been able to visit them since the border closed last spring to all but essential travel….
Border or no border, the extended family rely on one another, so the year has been hard on them all. The mutual reliance is extensive — other nations in the Blackfoot Confederacy include the Blackfeet and three tribes in southern Alberta tribes that share a language and culture. While over 30% of adults in the US are fully vaccinated, only about 3% in Canada are, where the vaccine can’t be manufactured [at least not yet*] so Canada depends upon global supply.
Early in its vaccination effort, Montana prioritized Native American communities, among the most vulnerable US populations. Now over 95% of the Blackfeet res's approx 10,000 eligible for the vaccine are fully immunized. Their Pfizer and Moderna supply came from allotments by the federal Indian Health Service and the Montana health department.
As the vaccines’ expiration date approached, the Blackfeet decided to reach out to their northern neighbors, and then, said Robert DesRosier, emergency services manager for the Blackfeet tribe,
"...the question came up — what if a nontribal member wants a vaccine? Well, this is about saving lives. We're not going to turn anybody away..."
Bonnie Healy, Blackfoot Confederacy health administrator, said … "If we can get [both both First Nations and other communities in the province] safe, then it's safe for our children to go to school there. It's safe for our elders to go shopping in their stores."
Across 4 days, with news traveling by word of mouth, social platforms, and media reports, Canadians as young as 17 from all walks of life came from many hours away, through the northern prairie’s grasslands west toward the snowy peaks of Glacier National Park, as Alberta’s case-load surged. They brought gifts and deeply emotional gratitude that being vaccinated would allow them to care for their own elders, be with other loved ones, take precious modest steps back toward working life. Even a Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra member came, sleeping in his overnight before being vaccinated the middle of next morning; he reckoned it would otherwise be months of wait.
The Canadian government has recommended extending the interval between the two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines from around 3 weeks to 4 months, with the goal of quickly inoculating more people amid the shortage. Some who attended the Blackfeet clinics had already gotten their first shot in Canada. More than 30% of Canada's population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, but around 3% have received both doses recommended by the drug manufacturers to reach full immunity. Canadian officials say partial immunity is better than none.
Other cross-border partnerships:
In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy [R] has offered COVID-19 vaccines to residents of Stewart, British Columbia, with hopes it could lead the Canadian government to ease restrictions between that town and the Alaska border community of Hyder, a couple of miles away….
...In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum [R] and Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister [Progressive Conservative} unveiled a plan last month to administer vaccinations to Manitoba-based truck drivers transporting goods to and from the US…
Source: Associated Press via Medscape (free to all readers who register) reported by Iris Samuels ... a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
* see also In shock move, the Biden administration backs waiving patents on COVID vaccines, drawing cheers from public-health researchers and ire from drugmakers.
In a historic move, the US government has announced that it supports waiving patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines, a measure aimed at boosting supplies so that people around the world can get the shots. “The extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” said US trade representative Katherine Tai in a statement.
The move came on 5 May, the first of a two-day meeting of the general council of the World Trade Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Until now, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan have blocked efforts brought by India and South Africa to make it legal to manufacture generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines.
Former US presidents from both the Republican and the Democratic parties have staunchly defended intellectual-property rights, so ... “This marks a major shift in US policy in a pro-public-health way,” says Matthew Kavanagh, a global-health researcher at Georgetown University in Washington DC [who is] part of the growing chorus of health-policy and global-health researchers advocating patent waivers, as the gap between vaccination rates in rich and poor nations grows larger every day….
“...if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences...”
— Michelle Obama, address to the Democratic
Convention, Monday August 17, 2020