5 new COVID-19 cases reported in Alaska

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reported five new COVID-19 cases in Alaska Monday. This includes another positive case at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau.

A Lemon Creek staff member has tested positive, according to state officials. Three of Juneau’s 17 positive cases in the state’s COVID-19 database are Lemon Creek employees. A fourth Lemon Creek staff member also tested positive Monday, according to the state. That test will be added to Tuesday’s statewide total, according to the state’s testing protocols. The state counts the positive tests received each day from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. and reports the number the following day at about noon.

There are no known cases among inmates at Lemon Creek, according to the state.

Alaska Department of Health and Social Services commissioner Adam Crum did not immediately have specific numbers on the number of inmates who have been tested in correctional facilities statewide, including Goose Creek Correctional Center in the Mat-Su Borough.

“I do know that if they meet the criteria for testing, the department of corrections is on it,” Crum said of testing inmates. “They submit the samples into the state labs.”

Crum said the unique aspect of testing at the correctional facilities is the ability to use the surveillance video for contact tracing.

Of the five new cases reported Monday, four are in Anchorage. There are now 277 total cases in Alaska, and there have been 7,830 total tests reported. That means about 3.5 percent of the people tested in Alaska have tested positive. In the Mat-Su Borough, 14 people have tested positive out of 482 who have been tested. The Valley has a .029 percent positive rate and .45 percent of the population of the Mat-Su has been tested.

“Many communities are sitting up additional testing sites and are being able to do additional testing. There’s a nice guidance from CDC now that actually allows people to test themselves being monitored by a health care worker and it helps to reduce the amount of protective gear the health care worker actually needs to be able to test,” said Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink. “We’re trying to make this as easy and accessible to all Alaskans as possible.”

Crum announced Health Mandate 14 which is a non congregate sheltering order allowing three specific populations to be housed in dormitories, hotels, and other non traditional structures. Crum said that FEMA requires the Chief Medical Officer to sign a document declaring the need to house vulnerable populations such as health care workers and first responders, homeless families with at least one family member who has tested positive and homeless families who require quarantine or isolation. Crum also announced that as a result of Dunleavy’s conversations with Chinese diplomats, a shipment of 12,000 surgical and disposable masks, 10,000 N95 surgical masks and 1,000 overalls was received from the Chinese government. Dunleavy discussed that indicators of when he may open up sectors of the economy will depend on the number of new cases of COVID 19 per day.

“The key here is going to be watching the numbers,” said Dunleavy. “This is going to be the week that we’re going to start talking about the economy and how we are going to be able to reenter an era of normalcy, or at least as close to it as possible. We may not get back totally to where we were before this virus but it’s our goal to get our life back, our economy back to as close as possible.”

Of the 277 total cases of coronavirus in Alaska, 31 were reported over the weekend and only five on Monday. The eighth death of an Alaskan due to coronavirus was reported on Friday, but not recorded until DHSS reporting went out on Saturday. Dr. Zink said that one month ago she had told Dunleavy that Alaska would need at least 2.5 million tests for a four to six month period of the spread of COVID 19 in Alaka. Zink apologized for using the term ‘hotspot’ to describe Anchorage and Fairbanks, but said that community spread is still being reported in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.

“The more that we can drive up testing, the more that we can have a good sense of exactly where this disease is and we can isolate and contain it,” said Zink. “If we can identify these cases and we can isolate them, we can get back to work, we can be doing a lot more together but that includes all of us doing our part.”

Zink clarified the difference between specificity and sensitivity of testing and said that the state lab has had a 95 percent sensitivity to the virus. Sensitivity can be limited by the amount of viral load a person carries and the effectiveness of the swab. Zink warned that no antibody testing has been approved for diagnosing coronavirus, but hopes to have better guidance from the CDC by next week on how to use such an important tool moving forward.

“Right now it’s all about getting testing up, so the more testing we can do to be able to drive that number down that really helps us to identify the cases,” said Zink. “The test is really the most effective tool we have as of right now so I think that we’re going to need enough tests to test all Alaskans multiple times.”

Zink described the steps discussed on a national call as to how communities can box in the coronavirus. Zink said that testing, finding, isolating and quarantining people with the virus are essential to being able to reopen parts of society. Zink said that her goal is eventually to be able to do surveillance testing and asymptomatic testing as well as testing people with symptoms of COVID 19. Zink praised the work of the state’s epidemiology team and said that 95 percent of people who have turned positive were contacted within two hours to begin case investigation rapidly.

“I am not aware of another state that is able to identify and work through contact investigation for every single positive case that they do and that has been our standard in the state of Alaska and continues to be our standard in the state of Alaska,” said Zink.

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