"I was in New York City through 9/11 and Sandy and the recession, and I wasn't about to give up on New York," says the 47-year-old dating app creator who lived in Manhattan. "But there was something about this that was completely different."
Half a year later, Cheek is among a legion of New Yorkers who fled the nation's most populous city following a spring and summer of Covid-19 stay-at-home orders and record death tolls, mass protests and social unrest, and spasms of violent crime.
"I don't see things changing in New York for a very long time," she said.
NYC hit with 'an absolute perfect storm,' mayor says
Some headlines have predicted New York's demise as the city confronts a spate of distressing economic and social indicators.
Interest in moving out of the city has doubled compared with last year, according to United Van Lines.
"I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house ... or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier this month.
"And I say, 'You got to come back. When are you coming back? We'll go to dinner. I'll buy you a drink. Come over, I'll cook.'"
With businesses closing and residents leaving town, those who stayed started to pay more attention to the city's growing homeless population.
To keep those living on the streets safe during the pandemic, the Department of Homeless Services moved more than 10,000 people from group shelters to dozens of hotels.
"There's incidents that are troubling," said city resident Chris O'Connor. "You know, there's a man masturbating in front the Natural History Museum. There's reported drugs being sold and used more commonly now."
And the city has seen a rise in crime in recent months. The NYPD reported the number of shooting victims increased 84% -- from 551 to 1,017 -- compared with last year. Overall, shooting incidents spiked 79% to 833 from 466 in 2019 -- which has led some people to draw comparisons to the crime-ridden '70s and '80s.
"What we got hit with was an absolute perfect storm: a health care crisis and economic crisis, a budget crisis, a social justice crisis of crime uptick -- all at once and all interrelated," Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week. "But this too shall pass, and when it does, the strength of New York City will come to the fore again."
'Diaspora of the elites'
Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said reports of the city's demise are exaggerated. He called the exodus of some New Yorkers in recent months a "diaspora of the elites."
"Some of them are kids who are going home to be with their parents or they're students and a lot of people who can work remotely," he said. "Others are families who have left the city for summer rentals ... in the Hudson Valley or Pennsylvania, as well as the normal set of people who go to the Hamptons. The difference is, they went to the Hamptons in March and they haven't come back."
Still, Moss said he would be concerned if many of these families don't return to the city in the fall. Also troubling, he said, was the pandemic's impact on the local economy, particularly with swaths of the city abandoned by office workers.
"This is a very serious," he said. "We have office buildings open, but no one's buying coffee because they're not coming to the office. The entire city of New York street vendor industry has been decimated by the desire of so many of our talented people to work remotely for good reason. We've now got homeless people replacing tourists in hotels."
While Manhattan has suffered during the pandemic, Moss noted that most outer-borough neighborhoods remain intact and stable.
"Those people aren't moving," he said. "They have families and jobs, and they own homes."
'Who knows? I might be back.'
The Extra Virgin Restaurant in Manhattan, like other small city businesses, has struggled of late. It has laid off most of the staff, turned to outside table service and broadly expanded its delivery service area.
"I don't think the city is dying," said the restaurant's general manager, Josip Raspudic. "I think the city is definitely going through a phase where we need to adjust and adapt to new things."
Raspudic is unsure what the winter months will bring for his industry if officials don't restart indoor dining in the city.
"I'm only worried about my job and this restaurant and my life, personally," he said. "When it comes to the city, I think it's gonna be a quiet summer. It's gonna be even a quieter, more quieter winter."
Back in Louisville, Cheek said that while her "soul is still in New York City," she has enjoyed living in "what feels like a mansion" for a third of what she was paying for a tiny, dark apartment in the Big Apple.
"I'm not sure I could go back," she said.
And as the founder of a mobile app, Cheek can work remotely from the rest her team.
"New York will come back on some level, but it's not going to have that magic that I wanted to pay so much money to live there for," she said.
Sill, Cheek did not rule out a return to the city where she spent nearly half her life.
"Who knows? I might be back. I've got that PO Box," she said with a laugh. "I need to check my mail."
This story was reported by Aaron Cooper, Jason Carroll and Ray Sanchez in New York, and written by Sanchez.
Ben Affleck
Bauer-Griffin/GC Images | Getty Images
Solstice Studios was supposed to begin filming itsnewest feature starring Ben Affleck in Los Angeles back in April. While the film's production was halted by the coronavirus, it's the lack of widely available testing that will keep it from resuming in the U.S. this fall.
"It became quite clear very quickly that it was absolutely impossible,"Mark Gill, president and CEO of Solstice Studios, said.
Instead, the movie will be shot in Vancouver, Canada in October.
Rising Covid-19 cases in California forced the studio to look at Austin, Texas as the new home for the film. Those plans quickly dissolved as cases grew in the Lone Star state and it became apparent that the production would not be able to accommodate the three tests per week for actors and crew that Hollywood guilds were requiring if it remained in the U.S.
"The problem is there is a shortage of tests, a delayed time between the test and the lab result and that would put us in immediate violation of our agreement with the unions who represent that cast and crew," said Gill,whose producing credits include "Pulp Fiction," "The English Patient," "Good Will Hunting" and "Shakespeare in Love."
Gill said the production also looked at the U.K. and Australia as other possible safe havens for production.
Last month, Frank Patterson, CEO of Pinewood Studios in Atlanta, said that the studio had conducted over 1,000 tests and had less than two dozen positive results. The majority of these positive tests were from part-time workers, he said.
When asked for additional information on testing on Friday, Patterson declined to comment.
A limited supply of Covid-19 testing materials has hampered the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic since the very beginning, public health specialists say. It's made it difficult for people to get tested in some parts of the country. Delays in processing test results plagued the U.S. throughout the summer as those who could get tested waited days, sometimes more than a week, to get their results making them virtually worthless.
Though national labs say they've recently cut the wait time, the U.S. is currently running around 600,000 tests a day when most epidemiologists say the country needs to process millions a day to truly reopen the economy open.
ProducerShaun MacGillivray, who is the president ofMacGillivrayFreeman Films, which predominantly produces and distributes documentaries, noted that there is no official enforcement of some of union testing guidelines, but there is a massive liability for productions if the rules are not followed and someone gets sick.
For larger studios, the additional costs to secure tests and laboratories to run them are easier to absorb. Independent production companies may have a harder time, MacGillivray said.
"From a budget standpoint, you've got to think about 20% to 25% more expenses to do that," he said.
In Canada, Solstice Studios will have readily available testing and quick lab results. The additional health and safety costs adds up to a couple of million dollars for the studio, which produces films in the low-to-mid-tier range of $30 million to $80 million.
Additionally, Canada has far fewer instances of coronavirus. The country reported an average of less than 400 new coronavirus cases per day, over the past week compared with more than 46,400 in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The cast and crew will have the quarantine for 14 days after arriving in the country.
"You can't plan for something if you know right now it's not possible," Gill said of productions that are looking to restart in the U.S. this fall. "You have to know now it will be possible in eight weeks or you are just planning for a disaster."
CNBC'sWill Feuer contributed to this report.
Hawaii Department of Health officials reported two new COVID-19 deaths on Oahu and 169 new coronavirus cases today, bringing the statewide totals to 6,769 infections and 49 coronvirus-related fatalities since the start of the pandemic in the islands in late February.
The Oahu man and woman, both over 80 years old with underlying health conditions, became the 48th and 49th fatalities today, health officials said in an email this afternoon.
A total of 41 deaths have been on Oahu, seven on Maui, while one was a Kauai resident who died on the mainland. The U.S. death toll is over 177,000 today.
Todays new COVID-19 cases include 150 on Oahu, 10 in Maui County, and nine on Hawaii island, according to the state Department of Healths noon tally. Of the 169 new cases, health officials said 149 were adults and 20 were youth under 18 years old. Two of those cases are non-Hawaii residents, 157 are Hawaii residents and 10 have yet to be identified.
The statewide coronavirus case totals by county since the beginning of the outbreak include 6,181 on Oahu, 300 on Maui County, 209 on Hawaii island and 56 on Kauai County, according to health officials. The total also includes 23 Hawaii residents diagnosed outside of the state.
As of today, 4,548 infections in Hawaii are considered active cases, with a total of 2,172 patients now classified by health officials as released from isolation, or about 32% of those infected. The category counts those infected people who have met the criteria for being released from isolation. Twenty-nine new release cases 23 on Oahu, three on Hawaii island, two on Kauai County and one on Maui County were reported today.
Of all the confirmed Hawaii cases, 399 have required hospitalizations, with three new hospitalizations two on Oahu and one on Hawaii island reported today, health officials said.
Lt. Gov. Josh Green said today that there are 250 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, including 42 patients in intensive care units and 34 on ventilators.
Two hospitalizations in the statewide count are Hawaii residents who were diagnosed and treated outside the state. Of the 397 hospitalizations within the state, 352 have been on Oahu, 36 on Maui, eight on Hawaii island, and one on Kauai.
Officials counted 2,026 new tests in todays tally, with todays 169 positive cases representing 8.3% of the total tested. Of the 180,850 coronavirus tests conducted so far by state and clinical laboratories in Hawaii since the start of the outbreak, a total of 3.7% have been positive.
By county, Honolulu has seen 1,807 patients released from isolation, and Maui has had 168 patients released. Hawaii County has 65 active infections, while Kauai has two, according to Health Department figures.
Hawaiis daily new-case count hit triple digits for the first time in late July, and has remained there for most of August, with the vast majority of confirmed infections on Oahu. On Aug. 13, the states daily new-case count reached a record 355.
>> RELATED: Hawaii health officials say more triple-digit coronavirus cases will compromise hospitals
This breaking news story will be updated again.
Above: A CalFire hand crew prepares for a midday hike in 100-degree heat near Jamul on Aug 14, 2020.
Tool! barks out a firefighter in the back of a CalFire truck.
Tool! is repeated when a hoe or chainsaw is handed out.
The gear is part of this hand crews uniform for a hike in 100-degree heat near Jamul. Firefighters are training for a fire season that is expected to be blistering. The region has already had a taste.
The Apple Fire first burned more than 33,000 acres in just a few days and heat and wind washed over the Riverside County backcountry. Less than two weeks later, the Lake Fire in the Angeles National Forest exploded in rugged country. Then, as lighting strikes hit record numbers, California wildfires charred the landscape. At one point last week, more than 350 fires were burning. Of those, 23 were considered major fires.
Aired 8/24/20 on KPBS News
Listen to this story by Erik Anderson.
RELATED: California Fires Claim 5 Lives, Threaten Thousands Of Homes
The total number of fires last year was substantially lower than the activity were experiencing this year, said Gavin Newsom at a briefing late last week.
The governor said there were more than 6,700 fires in the state so far this year, up from just over 4,000 during the same period the year before. The hottest time of the year are still ahead, and thats on the minds of fire crews in San Diego county. A small group of firefighters huddled in the shade near the Jamul Fire Station last week.
We get a fire, said Danny Ramirez, a captain leading this team. And youre tired and that fatigue sometimes makes up a little woozy or confused.
Ramirez is delivering a safety briefing before the midday hike. The big lessons today, be safe, stay hydrated, and communicate.
When it heats up in the middle of the day at two oclock, three oclock, Ramirez said in is quiet but authoritative voice. Those triggers are in the back of their minds. Hey, thats what we talked about this morning. The heat, and the probability of ignition.
And now their preparation also includes the threat of COVID-19. Everyone on the crew is wearing a face mask in an effort to keep the infection from spreading. Firefighters are taking the advice of public health officials because they cant afford to lose anyone.
Wearing our masks, taking our temperatures every morning, double-checking with everybody is probably the best thing we can do, Ramirez said.
RELATED: San Diego County Firefighters Help Battle Apple Fire
But firefighters concede that staying safe at the firehouse or during training is much easier than when a crew is battling flames in the midst of a wildfire.
That is when firefighting becomes their first priority.
Saving a structure or saving a life, Ramirez said. Sometimes COVID takes a back seat to that. When we regroup and we have to remember that COVID well use the precautions again.
The Apple Fire was the first major fire incident where CalFire also dealt with the pandemic.
Being up there in Riverside at the base camp, things were different. It was a different experience, said Thomas Shoots of CalFire.
The nearly three thousand firefighters who call in, to battle the flames, spent time at one of two base camps. Normally there is only one.
Foodservice was prepacked and crews that came together fought the fire together and stayed together. Fire officials did that to keep the virus from decimating their ranks. Fire officials met outside instead of huddling in trailers.
Daily briefings observed social distancing rules.
RELATED: San Diego Urban Corps Helps Clear Brush, Create Defensible Space
Even so, local fire crews have been touched by the pandemic.
Were really lucky down here in San Diego County, Shoots said. With CalFire and San Diego County Fire we have a lot of folks to draw on. We have 40 stations. So even these small little blips where we have folks go out, its not devastating to us. Were able to work through it.
What CalFire officials want to avoid is creating a super spreader event during a major fire incident. The agency cant afford to lose lots of firefighters just as a severe wildfire season heats up.
We all good? barked the lead firefighter in the 100-degree Jamul heat.
Getting used to physical exercise is an important way firefighters get ready for their battle against the flames. Juan Ramirez is carrying plenty of water and a heavy hand tool.
Well use it to strike vegetation and tear, Ramirez said.
The idea is to cut fuel breaks in the backcountry so a wildfire will not feed on dry vegetation. It is hot, but it will be much worse in a real firefight.
Its a little hotter, Ramirez said. A little dryer. And youve got that smoke and low visibility and everybody is on high alert with their head on a swivel and working hard.
Ramirez is also mindful that they are battling more than just flames as the global COVID-19 pandemic refused to loosen its grip.
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CORONAVIRUS CZAR UPDATES ON COUNTY ALERT MAP, PLASMA USE, COVID REINFECTIONS West Virginia Coronavirus Czar Dr. Clay Marsh provided several updates during his remarks Monday.
First, he offered clarification on the differences between the West Virginia County Alert System map and a similar map by the Harvard Global Health Institute, which served as the original inspiration for the school metric.
They're going to be slightly different, Dr. Marsh said. Remember, the difference in the two maps is that the Harvard map counts all cases: community spread cases and congregate cases, including nursing home residents, correctional facilities inmates, and so on. The West Virginia school map just focuses on the community spread.
Dr. Marsh went on to provide an update about ongoing plans to stand up a plasma donation operation in West Virginia.
The convalescent plasma the immune plasma which is a blood product that is used from people that have recovered from COVID-19 to give to people who are really sick with COVID-19 was approved by the Federal Drug Administration for emergency use authorization, Dr. Marsh said. Basically what that means is we will start being able to give the convalescent plasma, not necessarily using only a clinical trial.
That will change the game because, in people that are really ill, in the ICU, on ventilators, if the convolution plasma is given in the first day or so, then the reduction in death is 36 percent, Dr. Marsh continued.
Finally, Dr. Marsh cautioned West Virginians that public health officials have confirmed that a man from Hong Kong, who recovered from COVID-19 once, has become reinfected.
That's not really a surprise to us because we know that COVID-19 is a coronavirus and coronaviruses are yearly viruses, Dr. Marsh said. So, if you had a coronavirus last year, you still can get it this year. So we knew that the immune response may not be lasting and this was about four months from the first infection.
We have known that antibody levels go down over three to four months in a number of people, Dr. Marsh continued. So that really tells us that if you've gotten COVID-19 then you may well be protected against a more severe form, but it doesn't completely protect you from getting COVID-19 again.
This is a real warning for a lot of our younger people and people that may not consider themselves so vulnerable because we know now that getting the disease is not necessarily a lifetime of immune protection.
NC State has paused all athletics-related activities after identifying 27 positive cases within the athletic department, the school announced Monday.
Not all cases involve student-athletes. NC State did not specify the athletic programs directly affected.
Overall, NC State said it has conducted 2,053 tests of student-athletes, coaches and staff with 30 total positives (a 1.46% positivity rate). That includes 693 new tests with 22 new positives since its previous report about two weeks ago.
Last week, NC State announced that all undergraduate courses will be online only, starting Monday, after discovering that the coronavirus had spread among the student body.
On Monday, the university reported three new clusters of the virus, including the one within the athletic department. There are now 14 reported clusters at NC State. The North Carolina Division of Public Health defines a cluster as a minimum of five cases that are deemed close in proximity or location.
During his most recent media availability on a call with reporters last week, NC State football coach Dave Doeren said his players were undergoing weekly testing.
"Kind of expected when the students come back that you're going to have an upswing in the numbers on the campuses," Doeren said last week. "It's more about managing them. We've been testing here every week and we've been good. We've had more scares than anything. A guy will have a headache and we'll hold him out until he gets retested and then he's fine. There's so many things that are symptoms of COVID, so every time a guy has one, you pull him out, you quarantine everybody that's in that tracking area. So we've had more removals, replacements, almost a day later because we're getting our testing back really fast.
"We'll just have to see how it plays out. Every day you just kind of bend your knees and be flexible and try to stay as positive as you can and deal with it."
While President Trump announced Sunday an emergency authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, such plasma is already being administered to infected U.S. servicemembers.
Trump heralded the recent policy change as a breakthrough, but the benefit of COVID convalescent plasma, or CCP, in treating those infected with the novel coronavirus remains unknown.
In the treatment, plasma is collected from people who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection and whose blood therefore contains antibodies. In theory, these antibodies could help neutralize the virus and improve the outlook for patients who are newly fighting the disease. But the medical community has not determined whether injecting CCP into sickened patients kick-starts the immune system and aids in recovery.
Even so, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration statement accompanying the presidents announcement notes that the potential benefits of the product outweigh the known and potential risks of the product. The plasma can also complement other treatments, rather than replace them.
Under a program started in May by the U.S. Armys Medical Materiel Development Activity, with FDA approval, 14 people have been treated with CCP, officials said.
Theyve received the plasma and are being followed over the disease course to see how quickly they recover, Army Lt. Col. Sandi Parriott, director of the activitys Force Health Protection division, told Military Times last week.
Data on the outcomes of such plasma treatments is then sent to the FDA, she said.
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Of those 14 CCP recipients, half were treated downrange, according to Carey Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Army medical activity.
Two of the 14 were active-duty servicemembers. Four dependents, two contractors, one Defense Department civilian and two retirees also received CCP, Phillips said in an email.
Three foreign nationals, who received special permission, also received the plasma, Phillips said.
Twelve of the 14 were older than 50 and every recipient was dealing with severe to life-threatening disease, according to Phillips.
CCP harvested from recovered military volunteers has been placed at nearly 30 locations worldwide, including military bases and aboard Navy ships.
While it remains to be seen whether convalescent plasma is an effective treatment for those sickened by COVID-19, theres very little risk in using it, Parriott said.
Youre giving antibodies from someone who has fought off the disease, she said. You think that would help, and help the body mount a better immune response against the virus, but we dont know for sure.
The U.S. Defense Department hopes to obtain 10,000 units of COVID convalescent plasma by the end of September. The trials are ongoing and Parriott suspects that final determinations regarding the therapys efficacy should be known in the next six months or so.
As of Monday, there have been 36,232 COVID-19 cases in the uniformed ranks, according to the Pentagon.
The Armys Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany the largest American hospital outside the United States and the treatment and evacuation hub for wounded troops coming from Iraq and Afghanistan was the first of 27 sites approved for the CCP protocol. Others include Madigan Army Medical Center, Washington; Yokota Air Base Medical Treatment Facility in Japan; U.S. Naval Hospital Guam; and the Evans Army Community Hospital in Colorado. The plasma is also available at at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, and the military medical center in Baghdad.
A lot of our population is outside (the continental United States), Parriott said. We have to get a little more creative on how we prevent and how we make these treatment options available.
Several Navy ships now serve as CCP sites as well, with the aircraft carrier Nimitz becoming the first to be approved last month.
Other ships capable of administering the convalescent plasma to COVID-19 patients include the carriers Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford, as well as the amphibious assault ship America, according to an Army release on the program.
To be eligible for the CCP program, sites must be capable of treating severe or life-threatening COVID cases and they must volunteer by reaching out the medical activity for consideration, Phillips said.
While the efficacy of convalescent plasma in COVID patients remains unknown, plasma has been used in the past to successfully treat other respiratory viruses, noted Navy Capt. Gilbert Seda, head of the Nimitzs COVID-19 response team, in the Army release.
In order to qualify for CCP treatment, patients must have a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection, have provided informed consent, have severe or life-threatening COVID-19 illness and not have any medical contraindications to receiving the plasma, Dr. Seda said.
To be clear, the CCP treatment protocol does not change the Navys plan to get Sailors with severe COVID-19 illness off the ship as soon as possible, Seda said.
If you have contracted and recovered from COVID-19, go here to learn more about donating your plasma.
Army Maj. Gen. Michael Place contracted COVID-19 in March and has now donated plasma several times, according to an Army release.
This is Soldiers and Soldiers Families taking care of Soldiers, said Place, the commanding officer of the Armys 18th Medical Command in Hawaii. You sit in this comfortable chair for a little while, they take the plasma from you and give you some cookies and snacks and some departure gifts.
The University of Alabama on Monday released the first numbers of on-campus COVID-19 test results that raised alarm bells internally.
A total of 531 confirmed cases between students, faculty and staff were reported on the Tuscaloosa campus since classes resumed Aug. 19, UA announced Monday evening. The dashboard did not include how many were tested Aug. 19 through Aug. 23 or the rate of positive tests.
The cumulative figure includes positive tests on UA System campuses identified through sentinel testing, point of care testing in campus health centers, and self-reported tests from private providers, the dashboard reads.Entry testing is not included in this calculation.
The school previously announced re-entry testing for students yielded a less-than 1 percent positivity rate. The new dashboard put the positive test rate for reentry at 1.04 percent of the 29,938 tests. The new numbers do not include those 311 positive tests from reentry.
RELATED: Tuscaloosa bars shut down 2 weeks to slow COVID spread on Alabama campus
The news came six hours after the City of Tuscaloosa announced bars would be closed for the next two weeks and bar service at restaurants must cease. UA officials did not give specifics when asked about the situation at the 11 a.m. news conference announcing the new measures.
Our challenge is not the students, UA president Stuart Bell said Monday morning. Our challenge is the virus and theres a difference, folks. What we have to do is identify where does the virus thrive and where does the virus spread and how can we work together with our students, with our faculty and with our staff to make sure that we minimize those places, those incidents. Its not student behavior, OK. Its how do we have protocols so that we make it to where our students can be successful, and we can minimize the impact of the virus.
RELATED: Auburn Universitys COVID-19 cases multiply by five
And theres multiple prongs to that from setting up isolation space to disciplining violations of COVID-19 mandates. Bell said he didnt know exactly how many students have been penalized under new rules implemented this month.
But I know a number of students are going through the student conduct process, he said.
Isolation and quarantine spaces are not at capacity, said Dr. Ricky Friend, dean of the UA College of Community Health Sciences.
But we are concerned that each day that goes by, he said, there might be more cases.
The dashboard released Monday evening stated 19.78 percent of the isolation space was currently occupied.
Friend said they were working on getting additional space on top of the 450 beds already in place to isolate and quarantine students either exposed to the virus or have tested positive.
UA vice president for Student Life Myron Pope told student leaders last Friday they were on pace to fill those spaces within the next week and a half, according to audio of the meeting acquired by AL.com.
A question we all want to know is are we at the breaking point? Alabama president Stuart Bell said Monday. Whats the lever thats going to cause us to have to change it. Basically, I think it goes back to flattening this curve, so we are able to accommodate our current operations and make sure we are able to keep the students healthy. So, there really is no single answer. I dont want to point you all to look at this graph or look at this data and know we can draw a line and say this is what were going to do because its a very dynamic situation -- very dynamic over the weekend as we saw positive cases increasing to again, today, cause us to take more steps. Were going to continue to do that.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter@ByCasagrandeor onFacebook.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) A seventh person from the Crow Creek Tribe has died.
57-year-old Ethel Left Hand Bull was on life support for more than a month at Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls. Left Hand Bull died of complications from the virus on Saturday.
Left Hand Bull was a member of the COVID-19 Security team.
Left Hand Bull was helping to make sure families in quarantine, at Big Bend on the reservation, had food and cleaning supplies.
She was a long-time fifth grade teacher at St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Reservation and would have received her masters degree in education this month.
Her sister, Janice Howe, tells KELOLAND News that several of her siblings were at the hospital when she died, but they had to stay behind glass and could not be by her side.
She will be buried in her familys cemetery at Big Bend on Thursday.
Other members of the Crow Creek Tribes COVID-19 Security team who died of COVID-19: 38-year-old Wesley Fire Cloud Jr., who died on July 2nd and 34-year-old Randy His Law who died July 6th.
The father of a member of the team, 56-year-old Ken Jewitt, contracted the virus from his son and died on June 27th.
The Crow Creek tribe recently disbanded the security teams. Members were assigned to help monitor cases and see to the needs of those quarantined, as well as collect data for the tribe.
A Lowcountry farmer is sharing concerns about the postal service after receiving dead chicks. It is something that has been reported in New England farms, but it may also be happening in South Carolina.
By Paola Tristan Arruda
Published 42m at 9:30 PM
