TWO GREY HILLS, N.M. — The man on the other end of the speakerphone gasped and let out a thick, phlegm-clogged cough before responding to Marlene Montoya’s question.
“We got it, I think, on a quick trip to Albuquerque,” he said. “Me and my oldest boy are in bad shape.”
Montoya, a COVID-19 contact tracer here on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico, leaned close to the phone and spoke in a low, soothing tone to the man, who introduced himself as Freddie. Before long, she assured him that another Navajo Nation Department of Health worker would bring him a cardboard box packed with canned food, fresh produce and water.
“Please,” she told the man in his early 50s, who lives in a desolate area of the sprawling reservation, “just stay home. We need you to stay put and monitor your symptoms.”