Just as other communities, Wrangell is enduring a springtime bloom of COVID-19 cases. As of April 20, the state health department reported 79 new cases in the community in the past 30 days.
Most of those were reported to the state in late March and early April, with new infections declining in the past week.
The spread of the highly infectious disease is of particular concern at the schools.
“We have had an increase in COVID and other illnesses during the past month and the schools have been struggling to find ways to stay open,” Superintendent Bill Burr reported to the school board on April 18.
Wrangell “continues to face an outbreak of COVID in both the community and our schools,” he said in a letter to parents four days after the school board meeting. Teacher shortages and a lack of substitutes has made it hard to staff classrooms, Burr said.
The Juneau School District on Saturday returned to mandatory face masks in schools after new cases pushed the community’s COVID alert level to high. The school board on Tuesday reversed the decision.
Though the 79 cases in the past 30 days is less than half of the number during Wrangell’s post-holidays record surge of infections, it represents almost 15% of all cases reported in town during the two-year-long pandemic.
The state’s case numbers do not include the results of at-home tests, which people are using more frequently as most publicly funded walk-up or drive-up testing sites have closed down around Alaska.
The health department COVID dashboard shows that more than 80% of the reported cases in March were the BA.2 Omicron, the latest variant.
Statewide, there were 1,526 new infections reported in the past seven days, according to the state health department on April 20, ranking Alaska at fourth highest in the nation for per-capita infections, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wrangell is not alone in higher case counts this month. The Petersburg Medical Center last week reported “a significant increase” in new infections in the community, including in the schools. “The community should assume COVID-19 is spreading quickly, impacting schools, day cares and local businesses,” the Petersburg hospital said.
The Skagway health clinic reported more than 30 residents tested positive for COVID since the first week of April. “What I have seen is mostly kids, some adults,” said Brent Kunzler, medical director at the Skagway Dahl Memorial Clinic. “Seems like it affects the kids a little harder this time,” Kunzler reported April 20.
Sitka is another hot spot for new cases, with 67 in the past seven days — about the same as Juneau, which has four times the population — and 160 in the past 30 days, according to the state’s April 20 update.
Earlier this month, an outbreak among crew members aboard the state ferry Matanuska forced the Alaska Marine Highway System to pull workers from other vessels to fully staff the ship to continue its scheduled service, said John Falvey, general manager.
“We’re trying very hard to keep the boat running,” he said April 8 of the staffing shuffle. Three members of the engine room crew tested positive, and then “a few more crew” also came down with the virus, he said. The ferry system was able to pull crew from vessels tied up in the shipyard for maintenance to keep the Matanuska in service.
The day after a federal judge in Florida on April 18 ruled against the federal face mask mandate for travel on airplanes, buses, trains and other public transportation, the Alaska Marine Highway System announced that masks are optional for staff and passengers.
Juneau and Anchorage, also on April 19, stopped requiring bus passengers to wear face masks.
Alaska Airlines was one of the first air carriers in the nation to cancel its mandatory face mask policy just hours after the federal court ruling. By the next day, most airlines had followed suit.
The U.S. Department of Justice last week appealed the judge’s ruling, following advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that face masking “remains necessary for the public health.”
Nationwide, as of last Friday, the CDC reported almost 1 million deaths related to COVID and more than 80 million cases. In Alaska, the case count was at 251,506 as of April 20, with 1,248 deaths. Just one death in Wrangell related to COVID has been reported by the state.
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