Longshoremen secure the Royal Caribbean ship Serenade of the Seas to Ketchikan’s cruise ship docks on July 9, 2021. Port staff are “highly encouraged” to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under a proposed agreement between Royal Caribbean and Ketchikan’s city government. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Federal COVID-19 protocols that were mandatory for last year’s cruise season are now optional, but cruise lines visiting Alaska are still expected to follow the voluntary guidelines for the coming season.

Ketchikan’s acting city manager, Lacey Simpson, says in a memo that all cruise lines scheduled to visit Ketchikan’s city-run downtown port have indicated they plan to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 protocols. Norwegian Cruise Line, which is scheduled to tie its ships up at a privately-run port north of town in Ward Cove, has also said publicly that it’s opting in to the program.

As part of the voluntary program, cruise lines are encouraged to sign agreements with the ports they plan to visit outlining their COVID-19 protocols. One agreement between Royal Caribbean and a wide range of Alaska ports is up for Ketchikan City Council approval Thursday.

Under the proposal, 95% of crew and all eligible passengers 12 and older are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Passengers would be required to present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding. Shoreside workers who interact with cruise passengers and crew are also “highly encouraged” to be vaccinated.

With the start of the cruise season fast approaching, Ketchikan city officials are asking the council for the authority to sign similar agreements with other cruise lines.

Cruise Lines International Association executive Brian Salerno told KHNS last week that the cruise industry expects some 600 voyages to bring roughly 1.5 million passengers to the state this summer.

Large foreign-flagged cruise ships, which bring most passengers to Alaska, are also required to stop in Canada by federal law. Canadian authorities require all passengers 12 and older to be vaccinated and present a negative test.

Ketchikan’s City Council meets at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Lew Williams III Council Chambers at Ketchikan’s Karl R. Amylon City Hall. The meeting is broadcast on local cable channels and the city’s website. Time is set aside for public comment at the beginning of the meeting.

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Ketchikan’s school board typically meets in the White Cliff building, shown here. (Maria Dudzak/KRBD)

Ketchikan students will no longer be tested for COVID-19 if they don’t show symptoms except in limited circumstances.

But Ketchikan’s school board on Wednesday stopped short of allowing COVID-19-positive students without symptoms to attend classes. The school board also left open the possibility that mask mandates may return in the future.

The 4-3 school board vote to end the test-to-stay program came after Superintendent Melissa Johnson said the school district’s recent move to a mask-optional policy made contact tracing impractical.

“I just think that because we took them basically or only mitigation away, which is masking, it doesn’t really make — and I’m not trying to be rude … I’m just saying that it would put way too much stress on our staff,” she said at Wednesday’s meeting.

The test-to-stay program, which was based on guidelines laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allowed unvaccinated students identified as close contacts to bypass quarantines by testing repeatedly. Johnson said health aides were testing hundreds of students daily even before masks were made optional.

Parents complained at Wednesday’s meeting that the program in practice kept students out of classes unnecessarily.

School board members Paul Robbins Jr., Bridget Mattson, Diane Gubatayao and Nicole Anderson voted to end the testing of students without COVID-19 symptoms.

Robbins, who put forth the proposal, argued that it was time to learn to live with COVID-19 as a part of everyday life.

“It needs to be treated like the remaining sicknesses that we treat them: if you’re sick, you go home if you’re, if you’re not sick, you don’t,” he said.

Other testing programs, including on-demand testing for people with symptoms and regular testing of athletes, are unaffected by the school board’s decision.

With the school district’s most broad-based testing program repealed, the school district said Thursday that students and staff would be “expected to self-report” if they test positive for COVID-19. Instead of contact tracing, the district says it will offer emails to notify classmates and teachers of exposure.

Ketchikan’s school board also rejected a proposal that would have allowed masks to be optional regardless of COVID-19 levels.

Instead, the board voted unanimously to decouple the schools’ COVID-19 risk measures from district-wide case levels. The school board set the school district’s risk level at “moderate,” the second-lowest level on the district’s four-tier COVID-19 mitigation plan.

That means masks will stay optional in classrooms and common areas for now. Masks automatically became optional on Feb. 21 after cases across the district fell below a key threshold.  School board member Bridget Mattson says administrators should be able to bring back masks if there’s a spike of cases in a particular school.

“I think that we should leave that on the table, should we go back to a situation where we have incredible spread within a school that we are trying to keep open, that we’re trying to keep in person. And I think that to to have that there as our contingency emergency plan would be viable,” she said.

Masks will remain mandatory for fans at athletic events. School Board President Stephen Bradford expressed concerns that removing the mask mandate for spectators might jeopardize other Southeast Alaska schools’ willingness to send teams to a regional basketball tournament next month in Ketchikan.

“We’ve got eight communities coming who, as it now stands, are expecting that the spectators in the crowd will all be masked,” he said. “And I think it’s a problem if we suddenly change that, and that would have a horrible economic impact on this community if those communities pulled out.”

Public health authorities have offered qualified support for the relaxation in rules.

“Public Health supports the Ketchikan School Board’s decision to end the test-to-stay program if they feel it is in the best interest of the district,” head Ketchikan Public Health Center nurse Jen Bergen said in a statement. “We do urge a slow approach to ending mitigation, and it sounds like the school board is trying to do that.”

“My only concern with ending this program is it took quite a bit of time to get up and running and would not be easily reinstated if needed in the future. However, Ketchikan still has quite a bit of testing availability in the community, including at-home test kits,” Bergen added.

In other business, the board unanimously approved a two-year contract with new superintendent Michael Robbins. He’s set to begin work July 1 after obtaining a superintendent’s endorsement on his state teaching license. His salary was set at $145,000 plus benefits.

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A transmission electron micrograph of the virus that causes COVID-19. (Courtesy National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Another Ketchikan resident has died of COVID-19, according to the state health department. State health officials report an unnamed man in his 70s passed away in December.

It’s the 21st recorded death in Ketchikan attributed to COVID-19. Ketchikan’s COVID-19 death toll now exceeds that of Juneau, a city with more than twice as many people. State data shows 20 Juneau residents have died of COVID-19

In Ketchikan, there have been 1.5 COVID-19 deaths per 1,000 people since the pandemic began. The rate is less than half that in Juneau: 0.62 deaths per 1,000. Sitka’s rate is 0.71 COVID-19 deaths per 1,000 people. That’s according to state health department COVID-19 data and 2020 Census population figures.

All but two of Ketchikan’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred since August 2021.

Though the death is shown on the state’s dashboard to have occurred in December, it was first reported on Wednesday. COVID-19 deaths often take weeks or months to be reported because of the lengthy process of death certificate review.

COVID-19 cases in Ketchikan have fallen sharply in recent weeks after rising to new highs in January.

State health officials reported 29 new cases of COVID-19 in their latest update on Wednesday, including data for the past five days. Some 43 cases have been reported in the past week. That’s down from 351 cases reported the week of Jan. 25 at the height of the omicron surge.

Two people are reported to be hospitalized with COVID-19 at Ketchikan’s 25-bed hospital.

Ketchikan’s state-issued COVID-19 alert level remains “high,” the maximum level.

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This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in yellow. (Courtesy of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Another Ketchikan resident has reportedly died of COVID-19. State health officials reported Wednesday that the unnamed woman was at least 80 years old. The death occurred last month, according to state data.

It’s at least the 20th COVID-related death in Ketchikan since the pandemic began in early 2020. And it comes as Ketchikan’s case numbers appear to be tapering off.

PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center reported on Wednesday that one person was hospitalized with COVID-19 at its 25-bed facility.

Updates about COVID-19 data in Ketchikan are available on the state Department of Health and Social Services’ online dashboard, typically updated Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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This scanning electron microscope image shows the virus that causes COVID-19 in green. (Courtesy of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Another Ketchikan resident has reportedly died of COVID-19. State health officials reported Wednesday that the unnamed man was in his 60s. The death occurred last month, according to state data.

It’s at least the 19th COVID-related death in Ketchikan since the pandemic began in early 2020. And it comes as Ketchikan’s largest-ever surge in cases appears to be tapering off. But state data shows case levels are still well above those seen in 2020 and 2021. Health officials attribute the statewide surge in cases to the easily-transmissible omicron variant.

PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center reported on Wednesday that one person was hospitalized with COVID-19 at its 25-bed facility.

Updates about COVID-19 data in Ketchikan are available on the state Department of Health and Social Services’ online dashboard.

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PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Ketchikan’s hospital operator is expected to address a nurse’s complaint at a federal labor board hearing this summer.

Former PeaceHealth nurses are accusing the Catholic nonprofit hospital operator of retaliating against its employees who complain about working conditions and patient safety.

Marian Weber is a traveling nurse who, until last August, worked at PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, which serves southern Southeast Alaska.

Weber says she expressed concerns to her superiors about a critically ill COVID-19 patient not being placed in the ICU. And she says she pushed back when PeaceHealth suggested a nurse sit with a potentially infectious patient as an alternative.

“I voiced safety concerns related to patient and staff safety related to COVID-19 hazard,” Weber said in a phone interview this week.

She says a hospital executive told her, more or less, that if she didn’t like it, she could leave.

“I went through the chain of command, filed incident reports and subsequently was terminated,” she said.

She told her story to KRBD in September. Four days later, the head of the hospital told staff that the administrator who’d threatened Weber’s job had abruptly left.

After she was let go, Weber says she picked up nursing contracts in Montana and Vermont. But she says the job search took time, and the pay isn’t as good as what she’d earned with PeaceHealth.

PeaceHealth sent a written statement denying any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, state and federal labor officials have been looking into Weber’s complaints.

Now, the National Labor Relations Board is asking an administrative law judge to order PeaceHealth to apologize to Weber and reimburse her for travel expenses and other costs incurred after Weber was fired and moved back to the Lower 48. A hearing is set for June 7.

It’s not the first time PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center has been scrutinized by federal labor officials for allegedly retaliating against its workforce. The hospital was accused of violating federal labor laws on retaliation four times in 2015, according to a federal database.

But Weber says the issue runs deeper.

“It’s not just happening in Ketchikan. Systemically, PeaceHealth has a history and a pattern of retaliation,” Weber said.

Weber points to the case of Dr. Ming Lin, an emergency room doctor who was relieved of duty after exposing what he described as inadequate COVID-19 safety procedures at PeaceHealth St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Bellingham, Washington.

In a statement to NPR in 2020, PeaceHealth said Lin “chose to not use designated safety reporting channels, and his actions were disruptive, compromised collaboration in the midst of a crisis and contributed to the creation of fear and anxiety.”

He’s being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union whose lawyers have filed suit for wrongful termination. An ACLU spokesperson says the case is ongoing.

And then there’s Sarah Collins. She worked for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington near Portland, Oregon.

“I’ve worked in many other hospitals, many other facilities. I’ve never run into this type of – It’s corruption. That’s the only way I can put it, is just corruption that seems to come from the top down,” Collins told KRBD this week.

She says she first ran into workplace issues in 2018.

“I was told that I was not promoted because I was claiming my missed breaks,” she said.

Then, last year, she says her union asked her to speak with a local news station about burnout among nurses. She says she cleared the interview with her hospital’s chief nursing officer.

“I was not derogatory towards PeaceHealth in that. I spoke to national nursing issues — as in, this is a national problem, not just a problem at PeaceHealth,” Collins said. “Right after that interview was when they called me and told me that I was going to be put on administrative leave.”

She was later fired. Collins has also filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

She says she’s speaking out because she wants to see real change within the PeaceHealth organization. She’s calling for an internal investigation into labor practices at the hospital system similar to one conducted by Oregon Health and Science University.

“I just want to stand up and say: Look, this isn’t right. You need to stop. You need to analyze your practices, because it just is not right. It definitely doesn’t fit with your mission,” she said.

The nonprofit’s mission is listed online as “carry(ing) on the healing mission of Jesus Christ by promoting personal and community health, relieving pain and suffering, and treating each person in a loving and caring way.”

“It’s very hypocritical,” Collins said.

A spokesperson for PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, Kate Govaars, said in a statement that the hospital can’t comment on personnel. But the spokesperson says patient and caregiver safety remains the nonprofit hospital’s top priority. She says care protocols at Ketchikan’s hospital align with state and federal guidelines. She says the hospital is confident in its care decisions and will respond appropriately to the NLRB to resolve the matter.

The PeaceHealth spokesperson added that the hospital has processes in place that allow caregivers to confidentially raise opportunities to ensure safer care.

“This approach is part of our commitment to continuously improve and vision to ensure 100% safe care. When conflicting perspectives arise, we bring both evidence and compassion to the discussion with the aim to resolve on the basis of respect and in the best interests of the patients we serve,” Govaars said

PeaceHealth and its predecessor, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, have operated Ketchikan’s city-owned hospital since it opened in the 1960s. Last year, the City Council renewed its contract for at least another two decades. As part of the new agreement, the city’s new Healthcare Advisory Committee has some oversight over the nonprofit’s operations of the 25-bed hospital.

The post Former PeaceHealth nurses accuse hospital system of top-down culture of retaliation against employees appeared first on KRBD.

Monday is the last day that Ketchikan’s web-based COVID-19 dashboard will be updated. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any online information about COVID-19 in Ketchikan — it’s still out there, just in a different place. KRBD spoke with a local public health nurse for a lesson on how to use the state’s website to drill down on what’s going on in Ketchikan.

Most of the familiar pandemic statistics — new cases, hospitalizations and deaths — are available on the state Department of Health and Social Services’ Alaska COVID-19 website, says Ketchikan-based state public health nurse Jen Bergen.

“It’s already being shared there, and it has been for quite some time,” Bergen said in a virtual interview last week.

There are a few ways to get there — but maybe the quickest is by typing data.coronavirus.alaska.gov into your browser’s address bar. That presents a few options: pages for information on vaccinations, regional hospital capacity, and cases. Another option is covid19.alaska.gov.

“Most of this information that’s being posted here is going to be under this ‘cases’ dashboard,” she said.

On that case dashboard are several tabs — a statewide summary, pandemic alert levels by borough, demographic info, and one labeled “cases, deaths and hospitalizations.”

“Most of the information that’s on that local dashboard is under the ‘cases, deaths and hospitalizations’ tab,” Bergen said.

That gets you to a page that shows the total number of — guess what — cases, deaths and hospitalizations across the state. With a few clicks on the left-hand side, that can be narrowed to a particular part of the state — say, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough or the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census area. It can also be narrowed by date, so you can look at, for instance, how many cases have been reported in the past week, two weeks, 30 days, and so on. You can also select whether to include residents, nonresidents or both.

“The other thing is cases by onset date versus report date. So the dashboard locally is (based on the) report date, and that means the date that they were actually told to us,” Bergen said.

The “cases, deaths and hospitalizations” tab can be customized to show data for Ketchikan, the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, or any other borough or census area. (Screenshot by KRBD)

That’ll adjust a chart in the center of the page. Mousing over each day’s bar brings up the number of cases reported on that particular day.

So: for a quick-and-dirty substitute for the local COVID-19 dashboard, go to the cases dashboard, select “report date” the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, click “all” under residence, and then narrow it to whatever timeframe you’re looking for.

Or, you can go to the “alert levels by borough/census area” tab and click on Ketchikan, which brings up a quick summary.

A quick summary of Ketchikan’s COVID-19 situation is available on the “alert level by borough/census area” tab — just click on the Ketchikan area. (Screenshot by KRBD)

There are also charts for hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitalizations are shown cumulatively by week — as of Monday, a total of 40 Ketchikan residents have been sick enough to require hospital care. Deaths are broken out by month.

Bergen says the hospitalization figure is not meant to indicate local hospitals’ patient load — for that, there’s a page on PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center’s website.

“So that is going to continue, and that is definitely where you get the most up to date information is that PeaceHealth Medical Center (site),” she said.

Now, there are some limitations: First, the state cases dashboard does not work especially well on mobile devices. The page crashed repeatedly on two iPhones tested for this story.

It’s also missing some key pieces of information about the number of people actively infected with COVID-19 and where they’re believed to have caught it. But Bergen says those metrics aren’t as useful as they once were.

“So (it was) really, really important in the beginning of the pandemic, to track the active cases,” she said. “As we see community spread, it’s harder to know when people recover.”

As for how people caught the virus, as the state reduces contact tracing, there simply won’t be as much data to report. But Bergen says nurses are still keeping track of who gets sick and where.

“We still in the background will notice if there’s some kind of cluster — meaning for some reason, there is an outbreak locally at say, a food processor or a school or a congregate setting. Public health will still be aware of that. It just won’t be posted on the dashboard,” she said.

And the state and local dashboard numbers don’t totally match up — when KRBD spoke with Bergen late last week, local numbers for the past week were about 4% higher than the state’s numbers.

“That difference does exist because there is a little bit of a lag between cases reported locally versus cases reported to the state,” Bergen said.

But still, Bergen says the state dashboard gives a good overview of pandemic trends — whether cases are high or low, rising or falling — that can be useful as residents make decisions about what measures to take to protect themselves and their community.

The post Here’s how to find Ketchikan’s COVID-19 data on Alaska’s statewide dashboard appeared first on KRBD.

Ketchikan’s school district is changing how it determines its COVID-19 restrictions. Starting next month, officials will look to the number of students and staff who spend time in schools while infectious when setting the school district’s pandemic risk level each week.

Previously, the district’s COVID-19 risk level was determined by the number of active COVID-19 cases in the community as a whole. But that metric will no longer be publicly available starting Feb. 1, when Ketchikan’s pandemic reporting shifts from the local level to state level. Superintendent Melissa Johnson says the new system follows the same principles as the old one.

“We are using the same vetted process that the district school board has already approved. The only thing that we are doing is using the population of our schools versus a population of the community of Ketchikan,” Johnson said in a phone interview this week.

The district’s four-tier plan ratchets pandemic measures like masks, visitor restrictions and health screenings up and down with the number of COVID-19 cases in Ketchikan. That means when cases are low, masks are optional, and when they’re high — as they have been for nearly all of this school year — masks are mandatory.

Ketchikan’s school board has in recent months discussed setting mask rules and visitor restrictions school-by-school. But Johnson says that’s not happening yet.

“And one of the main reasons for us in administration is that we have a lot of crossover cases — we have kids that, you know, one goes to the middle school, one goes to the high school and one goes to an elementary school. When a family is affected, it’s affecting our whole district,” she said.

A recent district survey of parents, staff and students shows stark divides on pandemic mitigation. About 65% of students and parents responding to the survey said they’d be at least somewhat comfortable with eliminating mask requirements altogether. But about 70% of teachers and staff said a masks-optional policy regardless of COVID risk level would make them uneasy.

Johnson says with COVID-19 cases at all-time highs in Ketchikan, the district does not plan to change its pandemic mitigation measures in the near future. She’s asking the community to hang in there as the omicron surge continues.

“I just appreciate the patience of parents, students and staff members,” she said. “I understand the frustration, and I’m in there with them. I’m a parent. I’m a staff member. I have a student in my house. It’s frustrating, but I’m hopeful that we can get to a different risk level soon.”

Under the new system, masks are required if 13 or more cases are detected in district schools in a week. As of Sunday, district officials said 47 people had been in school while infectious in the past week.

The post Ketchikan schools’ COVID-19 measures will depend on cases across the district starting next month appeared first on KRBD.

Craig High School in September 2021. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

Public schools in Craig are struggling to stay open as the omicron variant rips through the Prince of Wales Island community.

Schools in Craig are open for in-person learning — for now.

“We are close to the edge at this point,” Craig’s Superintendent Chris Reitan said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Reitan says the district is struggling with a wave of new infections.

“We have about 20% of our students who are out either confirmed positive or out with symptoms. We have about 20% of our staff — and that’s including all staff, not just teachers — but 20% of staff who are out either confirmed positive or with symptoms,” Reitan said. “We’re making it work. We’re keeping the school open and running.”

The district’s 56 staff and 230 students returned to in-person classes earlier this month after a week of remote learning. Reitan had called for the abrupt shift to online classes after teachers and students tested positive in the first week back from winter break. That forced many to quarantine at home and brought into question whether there’d be enough teachers to teach.

So Reitan put the question to Craig’s school board with a plan to reopen schools. It came from a committee of district staff and outside advisers tasked with developing COVID-19 policies.

High school teacher Deanna Claus had been part of that effort. She says the primary change was allowing students to avoid quarantines if they wore a mask.

“Because people really want to be in school. I want to be in school, we all want to be in school,” Claus said Friday. “But at the board meeting, what happened was all of that was scrapped in favor of mask choice the entire time.”

Facing pressure from parents who called for a return to classrooms and decried mask mandates, the school board voted on Jan. 14 to reopen schools without requiring exposed students to wear a mask or stay home. The board also ditched contact tracing, which had been the responsibility of school staff while state public health nurses were overwhelmed.

Board Vice President Joel Steenstra acknowledged at the time that COVID-19 could spread widely.

“I kind of get the impression this is just kind of like, let it run wild. It’s going to get in school, it’s going to run wild,” he said at the Jan. 14 meeting.

Board President Scott Brookshire suggested that was inevitable.

“I think regardless of what we do here, that’s going to happen anyway,” he said.

But Board Member Marla Dillman pushed back.

“To some degree it is going to run wild, (but) I think the school should try to do their part to try to mitigate that where and when we can,” she said.

In the end, she was the lone vote against. It passed 3-1. Under the new policy, the only people required to wear masks are those who test positive between five and 10 days before and some athletes and activity participants who have to abide by interscholastic rules. Parents, students and staff get a generic email when someone at a their school tests positive instead of a call telling them they’ve been exposed.

Two members of the Craig district’s COVID committee resigned from the body in protest. One of them was Deanna Claus.

“It’s absolutely mind blowing. I just cannot understand it. And I’m horrified that the district would take such a measure,” she said.

The other was Jessica Priddy, the medical director and regional administrator for Prince of Wales Island at the local Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium clinic which advises Craig’s school district. She declined to comment.

Craig’s teachers are divided on what to do next. In a lengthy statement, Courtney Wood, the head of the Craig Education Association teachers union, says the new policy reflected the will of a majority of the Craig community. The union hasn’t taken a position on the recent changes, but Wood says everyone can agree that teachers prefer to teach face-to-face.

The post Schools in Craig are struggling to stay open as students and staff come down with COVID-19 appeared first on KRBD.

This false-color electron microscope image shows the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in yellow. (Photo: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Three more Ketchikan residents have reportedly died of COVID-19. In a statement released Monday, the state Department of Health and Social Services report two men in their 50s and 60s and a woman in her 60s had succumbed to the coronavirus late last year.

According to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, two of the deaths occurred in November and one occurred in December.

The report comes as case numbers in Ketchikan again reach new highs. On Friday, local authorities reported a record two-day total of 85 new infections, not including at-home tests. Another 163 positives were reported on Monday, a record for a weekend count. And officials at Ketchikan’s school district said Monday that 47 students and staff reported being in school while infectious last week.

Cases are also especially high on Prince of Wales Island. Local public health nurses said Monday that 79 cases had been reported in the past week, not including positive at-home tests.

Four people were reported to be hospitalized with the disease at Ketchikan’s 25-bed hospital on Monday.

A total of 18 Ketchikan residents have reportedly died of COVID-19.

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