As the nation and the world struggle to beat back the wave of positive COVID-19 cases that have come this winter, the Navajo Nation is taking a step that it believes will help in that fight. 

Navajo Nation will now be requiring all government workers on the reservation to be vaccinated and boosted. The bill also changes the definition of “fully vaccinated” from meaning two doses of the COVID vaccine to meaning two doses as well as a booster.

Jonathan Nez, the president of the Navajo Nation, has signed an executive order that will put the requirement in place. While the whole world has been struggling with containing the virus, the reservation has had a particularly tough time. A record number of COVID cases were reported on the reservation recently, ABC 15 reported. 

“Our case numbers have been very high recently, but the number of hospitalizations has not surged and the numbers of deaths has remained low," Nez said, according to KRQE. "This shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective and that they are saving lives.”

Two weeks ago, tribal health officials reported 525 new cases in one day, the largest single day number of positive cases since the start of the pandemic. In total, the Navajo Nation has reported more than 45,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the limits of the reservation. This has resulted in 1,600 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, the station reported.