The Kodiak Island Borough School District held a presentation Wednesday night to give parents a rundown of where the school district stood in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Anne Zink, Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Coleman Cutchins, State Pharmacist for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services gave presentations on the Delta variant of the virus, and answered community questions.
Their briefing addressed what was known about the current virus, as well as areas that required more study. Anne Zink gave the first presentation.
“Here you can see the Delta variant in comparison to their original Wu Han virus. It’s much more transmissible meaning it moves more quickly from person to person, to one person getting the virus can spread it to somewhere between five to eight other people, assuming they’re all susceptible, and assuming there’s no other mitigation things that are taken into account,” Zink said.
Zink also addressed something of extreme importance to those gathered at the meeting- the virus is beginning to have a more widespread impact to the health of children, possibly by virtue of its increased spread relative to previous variants.
“We’re clearly seeing children being impacted by this variant. But how much of that is just because we’ve got a lot more kids mixing versus and a lot more kids just being exposed to the virus versus the variant itself is still yet to be determined. And we continue to follow that data closely,” Zink said.
The doctors stressed the importance of masks and vaccinations to combat the spread of the virus. They then answered a battery of questions collected by school district Superintendent Larry LeDoux on the virus’ effect on children. Some parents questioned the long-term effects of mitigation strategies- such as masking for several hours a day, several times a week- on children.
Questions soon turned to specifics about the school’s mitigation plan. Superintendent LeDoux outlined the circumstances that would prompt the school to return to remote learning, should this second wave of the virus prove bad enough.
“We’re hoping not to close schools or the entire district- it could happen. If we have a major outbreak in a school that affects a number of staff members and students, we would temporarily close that school and move to remote learning for that school. Decisions related to closing schools are on a case-by-case basis. Again, with consulting with our medical community, we could close the school if we were ordered certainly by the governor, as what happened last time. If we had, as I said earlier, a number of staff that were COVID-compromised, or if the flu returns and we don’t have enough staff to safely operate the schools, we would close the school,” LeDoux said.
The Kodiak Emergency Operations Center says that they expect the peak of this new wave of COVID to be as far away as October. The first day of school for KIBSD is September 1st.