Cruise ship workers with COVID quarantined at Stikine Inn

Three crew members aboard the 62-passenger National Geographic Sea Bird operated by Lindblad Expeditions were quarantined with COVID-19 at the Stikine Inn. The three were brought to Wrangell from Petersburg after the ship docked there on May 15, due to a lack of accommodations in Petersburg during the Little Norway Festival May 19-22.

“Three asymptomatic crew members tested positive for COVID-19 during routine screening,” spokesperson Patty Disken‐Cahill at Lindblad Expeditions, said Sunday via email. “Due to space constraints onboard, they were disembarked from the vessel. There were no accommodations available in Petersburg, so they were transferred via private boat to Wrangell for their isolation period. They remained in isolation for 10 days, until testing negative for COVID-19 and rejoining the vessel.”

The crew members returned to the Sea Bird when it docked May 27 in Wrangell.

The cruise line paid the hotel charges.

“We do have space that we allow people to quarantine in,” Stikine Inn co-owner Jake Harris said Friday. “We have very good quarantine protocols at the hotel. It’s something we had to come to terms with during COVID, initially. We can entertain it as long as we’re not full in the hotel, which we’re not.”

Harris said having a quarantine space helps the cruise ships, and allows the borough to accommodate the vessels coming into port.

“It’s not just the cruise ships, it’s people from all over,” he said. “We had to put a system in place.”

The borough last November canceled its contract on its previous standby quarantine facility, the Sourdough Lodge, Wrangell Fire Department Capt. Dorianne Sprehe said Friday.

Jamie Roberts, who was the borough’s deputy emergency operations center manager until February, said Friday, “The Stikine Inn would not take positive (tested) folks until November 2021. Once we knew that people had a place they could go (specifically travelers), we ended the (Sourdough Lodge) lease.”

The contract, paid with federal pandemic funds, was in place from June of 2020 through November 2021. During that time, Sprehe said two people quarantined for 14 days each on two separate occasions.

“When no one knew what COVID was, it was a grand idea,” Sprehe said. “The two who stayed there were appreciative, that’s for sure.”