CAMERON, Ariz. — Lisa Robbins runs the generator attached to her family’s mobile home for just a few hours most mornings. With no electricity, it provides heat in this rural high-desert stretch of the Navajo Nation where overnight temperatures often linger in the low 30s this time of year.
Robbins first started hearing the whispers earlier this month — the fever, that sickness, something called coronavirus — but most people in this town of about 900 didn’t seem too worried. It was far off, neighbors told her, a world away in the big cities.
So, Robbins, who rarely has access to the internet or TV news, continued with her daily routine, which includes helping her mother, who sometimes suffers from side effects of a surgery years ago to remove a cancerous stomach tumor.
Then came the bang on her door and a stark warning from local leaders.
“They told us to stay inside … don’t come out because people could die,” Robbins said one evening last week. “It hit us so fast, no one knows what to do.”
Here on the largest Native American reservation, one that spans portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, politicians and health officials are mounting a frantic effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The impact could be especially devastating, officials fear, in an extremely rural area larger than West Virginia, with roughly 175,000 residents and only four inpatient hospitals.