"Thwarting the coronavirus means washing hands and staying hydrated. That’s not easy for the 2 million Americans still without plumbing in 2020."

"Two weeks ago, as the coronavirus was spreading across the U.S., Shanna Yazzie loaded the bed of her gray Toyota Tacoma pickup truck with as many empty, five-gallon containers as she had in her house and drove 25 miles on unpaved desert roads looking for a place to fill them with water.

This is a routine for Yazzie, 38, one of the 2 million Americans who live without access to running water. She lives in Cameron, Arizona, a town of fewer than 900 on the edge of the Navajo Nation, where one-third of the reservation’s 350,000 residents lack running water and sanitation.

Native Americans are 19 times more likely to lack indoor plumbing than white Americans, according to a report published last November by the human-rights group DigDeep, where Yazzie works, and the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance."

Alexander C. Kaufman reports for HuffPost March 26, 2020. [2]