Medical Assistant Molly Bolton collects nasal swab tests at a Ketchikan Gateway Borough drive-up COVID-19 testing site May 13. Restaurants, bars and gyms in town have been asked to close as officials attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19 after the city's pandemic risk level was raised to its highest level.
Ketchikan's first cruise ship of the year canceled its visit due to a spike in COVID-19 infections in the community, UnCruise Adventures director of marketing and communications Liz Galloway said last Thursday.
The Wilderness Legacy, carrying 55 passengers, was scheduled to arrive early last Friday morning and stay until about 6 p.m.
Ketchikan broke two pandemic records last Thursday, recording a record-high case count of 20 new infections, and marking an all-time high of 102 active cases. Then, on Friday, it set another record with 6.2% of COVID-19 tests coming back positive. A test positivity rate over 5% can indicate that the virus is spreading undetected, officials said.
The active case count represents almost 20% of all the COVID-19 cases recorded in the community since the pandemic started more than a year ago.
Restaurants, bars and gyms in Ketchikan were asked last week to close after the city's pandemic risk level was raised to its highest level as officials attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.
"Everybody is concerned," said Ketchikan Visitors Bureau President Patti Mackey, not only about the loss of the ship visit but about the current high-risk COVID-19 level in the community.
She said another UnCruise Adventures vessel is scheduled to arrive this Saturday. That ship can carry a maximum of 76 passengers, but likely will carry fewer due to Coronavirus mitigations. UnCruise Adventures requires that all of its crew members and passengers be fully vaccinated.
UnCruise had been expected to stop in Wrangell this summer, after missing last year due to pandemic restrictions, but the company notified the borough last month that it would limit its port calls this summer to Ketchikan and Juneau.
Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center Incident Commander Abner Hoage said he wasn't particularly surprised by the decision of the cruise line to skip Ketchikan last week, with the virus risk level so high locally.
"As we look at things starting to reopen, and especially our cruise industry, they're going to be looking at community infection rates, despite the fact that they're going to be requiring crews and passengers to be vaccinated," he said.
Hoage said that of the 77 cases recorded locally between April 1 and May 5, only two of those people had been vaccinated against the Coronavirus.
Because of the high case count and risk, two Ketchikan schools were closed to in-person learning and a third ran at half capacity last week.
COVID cases increased in connection with an outbreak at a wrestling tournament held at Ketchikan High School in April that brought athletes from seven different schools across the region. State activities association officials issued a warning to the school for its alleged failure to enforce the wearing of face masks and testing of competitors.
Contact tracing showed that at least five people who attended the tournament were infected with the virus at the time of the competition, authorities said.
"If we want to have a vibrant economy, the more people we can get vaccinated, so that we keep that spread down, the better," Hoage said.
City of Ketchikan Mayor Bob Sivertsen said, "It's just something to be aware of in regard to our economy," adding, "I think there's a lot of COVID fatigue going on in the community and we may have just let our guard down a little bit, and we need to get back to what worked in the past."
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