Daily Sitka Sentinel

Mask Debate Over, Incident Cmdr. Says

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer 

With a decline in cases the last few days, Sitka continued on a downward trend in positive COVID tests today, but was still well above state and national averages.

Sitka added seven new cases on Monday, and six before press time today. The dashboard is generally updated at 8 p.m. daily cityofsitka.org. The current number of active cases is 127.

SEARHC today reported 10 coronavirus patients at Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center, as of this morning. The cumulative hospitalization figure is 37.

The 14-day rolling case rate is 17.64, cases per day, which is down from a week ago. Any figure of more than 1 per day is considered “high” risk of transmission for the community.

The Assembly last week passed a mask requirement for indoors in public settings or communal spaces outside the home, in line with the current Centers for Disease Control recommendations.

For the past several weeks Sitka’s Unified Command, a nonpolitical body, has recommended both vaccinated and unvaccinated people wear masks indoors in public settings.

Incident Commander Craig Warren, the Sitka fire chief, says the debate on efficacy of masks is over. 

“We just know masks work,” he said. “In my mind there’s no longer a debate. We had several volunteers walk into emergency scenes, who had contact with COVID positive patients, and we didn’t know at the time they were COVID positive. Our volunteers wore nothing more than surgical masks, just like everyone else in town has been wearing (not an N95). And we had no transmission. The debate on the efficacy of masks is over.”

The city mask mandate went into effect on Thursday at the time the emergency ordinance was passed. The vote was 6-0, with one Assembly member absent.

The U.S. is on an upswing in cases. The New York Times chart shows the nationwide daily average is 26 cases per 100,000 population.

The Alaska average is currently 36 per 100,000 per day, and increased 86 percent in 14 days. Sitka is showing a positive test rate of 168 per 100,000 on average, and is on a slightly downward trend (4 percent) over 14 days.

Cases on the rise in Alaska include Prince of Wales-Hyder, which is seeing a 4,400 percent increase. Also going up substantially are cases in the Aleutians (1,950 percent) and Bethel (614 percent) census areas. Although the figures are going up dramatically by percentage, their per-day averages are still below Sitka’s 168 per 100,000: POW and Aleutians, 104 per 100,000; Valdez 112; Bethel 39. Juneau is averaging 37 and Ketchikan is averaging 29 per 100,000.

On the local dashboard, Sitka is on track to drop 37 cases each of the next two days on the 14-day dashboard. Each of those days includes 2 nonresidents and 35 residents. With removal of the largest figures since the start of the pandemic off the chart, the per-day rate will trend downward if the same amounts are not logged today and Wednesday.

Warren cautioned Monday that the dashboard shows only “what is currently happening, not what’s going to happen.”

Sitka’s vaccination figures are at 70.9 percent “fully vaccinated” (5,234) and 76.7 percent (5,665) “partially vaccinated” out of the 12 and up population of 7.385.