By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Sitka’s first death due to COVID-19 has been reported.
“Sitka has joined most of the rest of the world in that we lost one of our residents to this horrible virus,” Fire Chief Craig Warren said this morning. Warren is the new incident commander for the city Emergency Operations Center for the pandemic.
Family members said today that lifelong Sitka resident Eric Olsen, 73, had gone to Alabama to visit his daughter when he contracted COVID-19. He died Feb. 24 in a hospital in Alabama, Olsen’s wife, Linda, told the Sentinel.
The death was posted on the Sitka dashboard, after the department of Health and Social Services added it to its webpage, Public Health Nurse Denise Ewing said. The state data is compiled according to the residency of the person, not where transmission, hospitalizations or deaths occur, Ewing said.
City Clerk Sara Peterson, who also is the city’s public information officer for the pandemic, announced the news of Sitka’s first COVID-19 fatality this morning.
“The Sitka Emergency Operations Center has been informed of a recent death related to COVID-19. The Sitkan was traveling out of state at the time. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available from Public Health Officials and in accordance with HIPAA laws. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.”
HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, related to patient privacy, among other provisions. The city did not release the name of the patient, and that information was provided to the Sentinel by Olsen’s family, and it is being released in the newspaper with their consent.
Eric Olsen was born and raised in Sitka, and served as a police officer both in Sitka and on the North Slope. An obituary will appear in a future edition of the Sentinel.
Warren said with the approach of spring break, the EOC will be reminding Sitkans about testing, social distancing, quarantining and other precautions. Even with the high vaccination rates in Sitka “residents should remember we’re not out of the woods yet. We need to keep our guard up.”
Sitka’s risk level is currently on “low,” with a 14-day rolling case average of .43 cases per day.
Recent cases added to the dashboard were two positive tests returned Feb. 27 classified as “community spread,” They were a symptomatic woman (resident) in her 40s, tested Feb. 26; and an asymptomatic man (nonresident) in his 60s. Another positive test was posted at 10 a.m. today, an asymptomatic man (resident) in his 40s, tested Monday, with results received Monday.
All are isolating in Sitka.
The rolling case average does not include nonresidents in the count, so the rolling average is based on the six positive tests of residents in the last two weeks.
The city COVID-19 dashboard now has new statistics on vaccinations and vaccination rates.
IT Director Grant Turner said he put the new graphic up over the weekend, as soon as the Department of Health and Social Services posted its data for vaccinations.
“The issue has been having an accurate single source of data,” he said.
Turner said he discovered that statistic on the DHSS webpage last week, with vaccinations compiled from all sources.
The data is for those vaccinated out of the 6,931 total population of residents 16 and older in Sitka.
The number vaccinated read 3,898 “partially vaccinated,” for a rate of 56.24 percent; and 3,075 fully vaccinated, for 44.37 percent fully vaccinated.
Turner said he had been keeping his eye on the state website for when the figures became available, specifically for Sitka, and not just according to region “Southeast-Southern Region,” and “Southeast-Northern Region.”
