The Indiana State Department of Health continues reaching out to the Amish population as it responds to the increase in COVID-19 cases in the northern part of the state. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lindsay Weaver says she met with local leaders and health officials in Elkhart and LaGrange counties Tuesday.
“We are also working with partners in the Amish community to help share information about COVID-19 and how to prevent it, so that they can receive this from a trusted source,” Weaver said during Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing.
Free testing sites were scheduled for today in Topeka and LaGrange, while another site was available yesterday in Shipshewana. State officials have also been focusing testing resources toward African American and Latino populations that have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus.
Dr. Nir Menachemi with the IU Fairbanks School of Public Health said there’s no one simple answer as to why various groups of people have been more affected. “If it’s because people are more likely to be in essential businesses, that’s one thing,” he noted. “If it’s because they live in family structures that include a lot more people than the nuclear family in smaller and confined spaces, that’s another thing. If it’s because of things going on, as an example, in the Amish community, that’s another thing. So there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”
He said health officials are now looking for specific solutions to target individual communities.
