The Northwest Arkansas region accounts for over half of these deaths, with 38 people reported to have died in that part of the U.S. over the past several months, according to the ministry’s mid-July report. But the ministry’s death total for Northwest Arkansas was updated to 47 Friday by poultry worker advocate Albious Latior, who has led community fundraising efforts to stave off evictions of Marshallese ill with Covid-19 who have been unable to work for weeks at a time and were unable to pay their rent.
“Sixty percent of our county’s Covid-19-related deaths are from the Marshallese community,” said Latior. “Our community needs help. But first we Marshallese need to help ourselves.”
According to the government’s report, the location with the next highest number of deaths of Marshallese from Covid-19 is Dubuque, Iowa with eight, followed by Waterloo, Iowa with five. Northwest Arkansas and the two Iowa cities have meat processing facilities that employ many hundreds of Marshall Islanders and have been hard-hit by the coronavirus.
Washington state reports seven deaths and in Denver, Colorado three Marshallese died from Covid-19.
Nobody has died to date from Covid-19 in Hawaii, according to the statistics in the ministry’s report.
A total of 2,492 Marshallese in the U.S. mainland and Hawaii have been infected by Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic earlier this year up to mid-July. Of this number, 1,536 are said to have recovered. Another 861 were reported in quarantine or isolation.
The 2010 U.S. Census reported 22,434 Marshallese in the U.S. That number was recently updated by US government estimates to about 30,000, although many speculate that the number of islanders having migrated to the U.S. is higher than this.
Marshallese in Northwest Arkansas have experienced the brunt of the infection rate as well as deaths. Over three quarters of all Covid-19 infections in Marshallese — 77% or 1,916 people — are among the population in Northwest Arkansas.
In an unrelated Covid-19, the first Marshallese patient in Manila, the Philippines to be positive for Covid-19 was confirmed recently. The patient is among a number of Marshallese who are undergoing medical care at Manila hospitals or were patients and are now stranded by the Marshall Islands travel ban that was instituted on March 8.
To date, the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau remain Covid-19 free.
