By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Comments and questions about the virus dashboard, a successful start of the school year, and upcoming vaccination clinics were among topics the Unified Command took up at Wednesday’s meeting.
Craig Warren, incident commander from the city Emergency Operations Center, said he has received a number of questions about changes to the dashboard on Sept. 1.
“I’ve had a few concerned citizens contact me regarding the new metrics involved with the city’s dashboard,” Warren said, leading off the round-table reports section of the meeting.
The new dashboard shows combined resident and nonresident cases each day, cases per week and the new case rate reporting standard – cases per week per 100,000 population.
“The metrics have always been numbers given to us from public health and state department of epidemiology,” he said. “Those were never owned by Sitka; we don’t have access to those numbers.”
Sitka is following the Section of Epidemiology and CDC model and is presenting the figures as clearly as possible for the public, the group was told.
“We don’t have breakdowns any more of gender and age,” Warren said. “It’s not that the EOC is hiding anything – we’re showing you the numbers we’ve been given.”
The case rate is based on the number of cases from the state, for Sitka’s population of 8,523.
“We normalize that to 100,000 so that there is a useful number across the country,” he said. “People that have drilled down on the math have noticed correctly that for us to hit blue (the lowest risk level) it means we’ve had zero cases over the last seven days.”
The next level up (moderate) is 1 to 4 cases in a week; substantial risk is 5-8 cases; and nine and more cases in a week places Sitka in the “high” alert status.
Today’s dashboard had not been updated by press time. Sitka’s case rate on Wednesday was 117.33. Any figure of 100 or higher is considered “high” alert. The dashboard no longer shows the number of active cases.
In his report, Assembly liaison Thor Christianson reminded others about a mask ordinance before the Assembly on Tuesday. The Assembly on July 29 passed an emergency ordinance for a face covering mandate for certain indoor public settings. It was extended in August through the end of this month.
The new ordinance up for first reading at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting would activate the face covering requirement when Sitka is at “high” risk. The ordinance is co-sponsored by Christianson, Rebecca Himschoot and Crystal Duncan, and if passed on two readings would expire in March 2022.
The proposed ordinance is tied to the risk levels under the new dashboard.
From the schools, Janelle Vanasse, superintendent of Mt. Edgecumbe High School, said the state boarding school has made it through the start of the school year with COVID precautions in place and no surprises.
“We had a pretty strict special alert for our campus the first 14 days, that we planned to do, regardless of what the community was at,” she said.
Precautions included quarantine time and “significant testing” for all kids, Vanasse said. “We were excited to make it through that.”
After the initial few weeks, the school switched to a routine of regular testing.
“We made it through our first week with no positives,” Vanasse said. “This is our second week of routine testing and through that we did pick up a couple of positives; we’re doing some close contact (tracing) and executing our plan. So far it seems to be working.”
She said she believes the Delta variant will add complications but that following the precautions plan will be important.
“We’re not seeing a lot of close contacts with positive results so we’re hoping the plan continues to work and we’re able to continue in-person school,” she said.
Sitka School Superintendent Frank Hauser said the district’s COVID plan is available on the sitkaschools.org website; and the alert level this year will match the city’s. Those with symptoms are encouraged to stay home and get tested.
“At this time we’ve had no reported cases of secondary transmission in any of our schools,” Hauser said.
City public information officer Melissa Henshaw said she’s trying to get the word out about the need to get vaccinated even after you have had COVID, and about the FDA’s final approval of the Pfizer vaccine, which was previously administered under an emergency authorization.
Shoshauna Schmidt, SEARHC chief medical officer liaison, told the group that Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center had no COVID patients on Wednesday. In other updates, SEARHC reported that it is ready to administer booster shots but is waiting for formal guidance from federal and state health agencies.
Those with questions on the boosters can check the CDC website:
cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html
“Hopefully, once they give us the go-ahead, we can get started right away,” Schmidt said.
Trish White, pharmacist and co-owner of Harry Race Pharmacy, said the pharmacy will be starting flu vaccinations (on Sept. 17), and continue COVID-19 vaccinations on Friday. This Friday’s clinic for COVID shots includes a few who will be getting their first dose. “Not a whole lot but every little bit is wonderful,” White said.
Some health care officials have said they expect the rollout of the booster shots to occur Sept. 20.
Vaccine signups for Harry Race are at sitkapharmacies.com.
Registration for Covid shots at SEARHC is at covid19.searhc.org.
