Navajo Tribe To Suffer Millions Of Dollars In Losses Due To COVID-19 Pandemic - President

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Navajo Tribe to Suffer Millions of Dollars in Losses Due to COVID-19 Pandemic - President

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th April, 2020) The Navajo tribe is expected to lose tens of millions of Dollars in revenue as a result of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic's impact on the economy, tribal President Jonathan Nez told Sputnik.

"The casinos alone, just those three weeks that they were closed, people are saying they're going to lose $4 to $5 million," Nez said. "So add another three weeks to that and you're looking at a loss of more than $10 million in revenue. That's just the casinos alone. You also got to look at the tourism industry, hotels, and restaurants."

The US Department of Labor said earlier this month that the United States lost more than 700,000 jobs in March due to the pandemic, raising the unemployment rate by almost 1 percent to 4.4 percent, making it the most in a month since 1975.

Nez said the tribe relies heavily on tourism, especially around the spring. He pointed out that all the tribal parks and other areas of interest are closed, which is impacting the local shops, restaurants and tour guides that benefit from tourism as well.

Nez said they are depending on the $2 trillion stimulus package to provide some relief.

White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday that the Trump administration has rolled out $38 billion in loans to small US businesses from its $2 trillion coronavirus (COVID-19) stimulus package.

The $2 trillion stimulus, passed on March 25, had allocated $350 billion in help for small businesses. President Donald Trump is asking Congress to approve an additional $250 billion to further help small US businesses.

The Navajo Nation, which is the largest Native American tribe in the United States, has confirmed 488 positive cases of COVID-19 and 20 deaths caused by the disease in its community as of Thursday.

The United States has more than 432,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 14,800 deaths due to the disease as of Thursday morning, according to data published by Johns Hopkins University.