KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
COVID-19 continues to gain traction in Kodiak.
The Kodiak Emergency Operations Center says four new cases were detected since Friday evening. Two cases are Kodiak residents who recently traveled. The other is a close contact of a previous case, and the fourth contracted the virus by community spread.
This brings the total number of cases in the Kodiak region, since the outbreak began, to 134, with 32 cases classified as being active.
Meagan Christiansen, a spokesperson for the EOC, says it’s like more cases will be detected over the next few days, but says the outbreak is still under control.
“I’m not terribly worried about voting tomorrow. We do expect increased cases, but we expect that to be as fallout from the ones that were cases that were reported last week in close contacts. So yeah, within the next week or two, we are anticipating that there will be more cases related to what we’ve already announced,” Christiansen said.
New cases reported last week at Kodiak public schools has prompted the superintendent of the Kodiak Island Borough School District to enlist the help of the Kodiak Area Native Association to offer more testing. Superintendent Larry LeDoux says they’ve had a good response.
“We are currently today testing almost 300 students and staff members who are designated close contact so if you drive into the high school parking lot, you’ll see that we’ve turned to the entrance to the auditorium into a testing center,” LeDoux said.
LeDoux says that despite best efforts, the risk is high with more than 1800 students going to school on any given days, as well as up to 400 staffers.
“So a good representation of the community is within the walls of one of our schools. So we have to be careful. So as the community starts ramping up in terms of positive cases, you can expect it to come in the schools,” LeDoux said. “So we have to be very, very vigilant as we look at the trajectory of COVID positives within our community.”
In the meantime, Kodiak should expect to see more positive cases as contact tracing identifies more people for testing.
