Health and social services commissioner clarifies mandates

ANCHORAGE — Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Adam Crum announced clarifications to Health Alert 11 and Health Mandate 5 during a press conference Tuesday in Anchorage.

“The primary goal of this is to clarify for non urgent elective procedures to be postponed or canceled until June 15. These actions can preserve staff, personnel for staff, personal protective equipment or PPE, patient care supplies, ensure staff and patient safety and expand available health care or hospital capacity,” said Crum.

Crum announced a revision to Health Mandate 5 that had canceled all non urgent medical procedures. The revision follows guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and provides a list of which procedures may be performed. The list also includes abortion procedures, according to Crum.

Crum announced an amendment to Health Alert 11 which prohibited gatherings of 10 or more people and had previously included gatherings of faith. On Tuesday, Crum announced specific guidelines heading into the Easter season for religious institutions that wish to hold services. The services must utilize minimum personnel with no more than 10 people in one room and those not engaged in speaking parts must wear protective face coverings. Religious institutions are encouraged to live stream their events and maintain a minimum of six feet in between clergy, increasing to as much as 10 feet for those singing loudly, speaking loudly, or playing instruments. Families attending religious services may travel to the religious institutions but must remain in their car with only immediate family members for the duration of the service. Crum also announced the clarification that those assembling Easter baskets must be pre-screened for health, wear masks and gloves and maintain social distancing practices upon delivery.

Additionally, Crum announced a Request for Information for manufacturers who wish to produce PPE and health care professionals who may be out of work and want to continue to offer their skills to fight the spread of COVID 19 in Alaska. The group Alaska Responds has been set up to coordinate with those who wish to offer their services to help combat the global pandemic as coronavirus continues to spread throughout Alaska.

“We want to make sure that we keep our health care professionals and talent in state,” said Crum. “You can sign up to put your talents forward to make sure that when the surge comes we have enough health care providers and talents in state to really take care of this.”

Crum also answered questions about the pending opening of the Bristol Bay fishery by saying that the state is working with local communities, fish harvesters and processors. Sportfishing for Alaska residents is still permitted but people must maintain social distancing practices.

Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink discussed the information on the state’s data hub. The first case of COVID 19 in rural Alaska was located in Bethel on Monday during the press conference around 5 p.m., and Zink said that all of the close contacts had been notified within four hours.

Gov. Dunleavy announced the largest spike of people who tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday, but no new hospitalizations or deaths due to COVID 19.

A total of 213 people had tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday with 22 additional positives.

Zink referred to the high point on the graph of cases in Alaska on Tuesday as a ‘scary spike.’

“The reasons we’re doing all these social distancing or physical distancing and all these mandates is because we know that this virus is most transferable, is most contagious early on in the disease process when people feel otherwise okay and that’s part of the reason it’s been so hard for the world it get it under control and why we’re trying to build up testing capacity as well as protective capacity within the state of Alaska,” said Zink. “It’s important that we make sure there is adequate testing for every Alaskan.”

Zink said that the rate of positive tests for Alaska is up to 3 percent and mentioned that five more people had been categorized as recovered from the coronavirus. The data hub will eventually include a number of people who are currently hospitalized due to COVID 19. Zink clarified that the 90 Abbott rapid testing machines were distributed on Monday, 50 by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and 40 by the DHSS. Zink said that the Abbott machines are more useful in rural Alaska where large numbers of testing are not needed but rapid results are.

“It’s really important that you have that face covering on,” said Zink. “It’s more about an asymptomatic person protecting the rest of the population.”

Zink extrapolated on the difference between currently underway viral testing and antibody testing that has not yet arrived in Alaska, allowing people to determine if they have already had the disease. Zink detailed additional changes in the CDC guidelines that may allow for people with symptoms consistent with COVID 19 to perform self tests, allowing for less PPE use by health care professionals. Anchorage currently has the most cases of any region with 103 and Fairbanks has 71 total individuals who have tested positive for coronavirus.

“We remain concerned about Fairbanks. We’re increasingly concerned about Anchorage,” said Zink. “There’s definitely testing going on in the Mat-Su area. We don’t know if we don’t test. There are testing limitations but we are moving forward on that.”

Zink discussed how clusters of cases in Fairbanks and Anchorage are adding concern, but mentioned how initial clusters in Ketchikan are seeing a drop. The Mat-Su still had only four cases on Tuesday, but another positive test was posted on Wednesday.

“We’re getting to that stage where we’re getting that closer and closer to where we need to be to deal with this wave that we anticipate is going to come our way,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy also continued to promote his day of prayer and hope on Friday at 2 p.m., and thanked Alaskans for hanging in there.

“We’re calling on all the resources we can call upon both here on earth and up above,” said Dunleavy.