Metlakatla begins to loosen some of its COVID restrictions

As the province of British Columbia begins to expand on the Restart BC program, First Nation communities as well are beginning to loosen some of the restrictions that they had put in place during the height of the COVID pandemic response.

Metlakatla has announced a range of measures to resume more normal operations for the First Nation, the first of which was the shift in how the community received supplies, with those residents who were able to travel to Prince Rupert for groceries allowed to do so at the end of May.

As this week continues on there were still some restrictions on access to the community however, with non-residents still not permitted to enter the community and only essential service staff from Prince Rupert allowed access.

The Band office remains closed to the public, while a gradual return of ferry service is now in place with trips set for three days per week.

Beginning next week, scheduled ferry runs will resume, though designed to allow for a minimal number of staff to attend the offices and to bring residents to Prince Rupert. The schedule for that service will be published by the Metlakatla First Nation prior to next weeks resumption of travel.

The full outline of the changes and future plans can be reviewed below:

You can access more on the plan to slowly reopen access to the community from the Metlakatla First Nation website and Facebook page.

For more notes on Metlakatla see our archive page here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.