A COVID-19 outbreak at a high school wrestling tournament in Ketchikan last month is linked to 23 infections in five communities across Southeast Alaska, including one case in Wrangell, according to health officials.
Ketchikan High School hosted the regional wrestling tournament, an annual event that attracted athletes from eight other schools on April 24.
In addition to cases in Ketchikan, wrestlers from Wrangell, Sitka, Mt. Edgecumbe, Craig and Klawock also tested positive for the Coronavirus after returning home, according to Kacie Paxton, spokesperson for the Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center.
No activities or events have been canceled in Wrangell, but the wrestling team went into quarantine after returning from the tournament, attending class remotely, said Bob Davis, lead teacher and assistant principal at the secondary schools.
The students returned to class Monday, he said, and should be able to attend the state wrestling meet May 21-22 in Anchorage.
One team member who had been fully vaccinated more than two weeks before the meet was not quarantined, Davis said.
Team members were tested before going to Ketchikan and are tested twice a week, Davis said.
Officials from the Alaska School Activities Association Southeast Region 5 issued a warning to Ketchikan last week, accusing the school district of failing to test competitors and enforce mask orders at the event, as is required by the region’s mitigation policies.
Contact tracing showed that at least five people who attended the wrestling tournament were infected with the virus at the time, Paxton said.
Ketchikan had 67 active COVID-19 cases as of last Friday after recording its fifth consecutive day of double-digit COVID-19 case counts. Most of the dozen new cases reported Friday were due to close contact with an infected person, the operations center said.
As of May 5, close to 9% of the high school’s students were quarantined due to the outbreak, which has infected 2% of the school body, according to the Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center. The high school went to remote learning last week.
Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District officials said last week that the matter was under investigation. The district, which has 30 days to respond to the warning from the school activities association, is looking into what happened and plans to provide information soon, said Katie Parrott, acting superintendent
“Due to Ketchikan High School’s actions, Region 5 schools and communities have been subjected to unnecessary health and safety risks related to COVID-19,” said the letter by Jamie Cabral, executive committee president for the activities association Southeast region.
“This letter is to be considered a 'warning'. … The undue stress on all communities and participating schools could have and should have been avoided. Ketchikan High School’s failure to follow the plans … created a situation that put both the region and participating schools in an unsafe and unnecessary situation.”
The letter added, “This is unacceptable and future violations of Region 5 policies may result in Ketchikan High School being denied membership in Region 5 in the 2021-2022 school year.”
As a result of the COVID-19 cases, a number of Southeast schools canceled events.
Juneau-Douglas High School and Thunder Mountain High School canceled their girls and boys soccer trips to Ketchikan the weekend following the wrestling meet, according to Juneau radio station KINY. Sitka High School canceled its home track meet and called off baseball games that would have featured the Ketchikan Kings.
Ketchikan Little League canceled its games last weekend.
In addition, “the Native Youth Olympics Traditional Games were also affected, with the southern portion of the event that was to be held in Ketchikan was rescheduled to later in May,” the radio station reported.
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