COVID-19 infections spike in Nome and region, second COVID death confirmed
By Julia Lerner
On Thursday, Oct. 28, NSHC reported the second COVID-19 death in the region. According to state data, the deceased is a man in his 60s, from Nome.
COVID-19 cases in the Nome, Norton Sound and Bering Strait region are skyrocketing following an outbreak in Nome. As of Friday, Oct. 29, there are 195 active cases regionwide, 103 in Nome, 39 Savoonga, 26 in Brevig Mission, 16 in Elim, five in Unalakleet, two in Wales, two in Gambell, one in Shaktoolik, and one in Shishmaref.
On Tuesday, October 19, NSHC identified 10 new COVID-19 cases. Five cases were in Nome, and five were in Brevig Mission.
The following day, 29 individuals tested positive with the virus, including 25 in Nome, two in Brevig Mission, one in Elim and one in Shishmaref. Of the 25 new cases in Nome, 18 were close contacts of previous positives, six were community spread and one was travel related.
Both cases in Brevig and the sole case in Shishmaref were considered close contacts, while the case in Elim was community spread.
NSHC identified 26 cases on Thursday, October 21, including 13 in Nome, eight in Elim, four in Brevig Mission, and the first case in the village of Wales. Of the 13 Nome cases, nine were considered close contacts and four were community spread. In Elim, seven of the eight cases were close contact, while the remaining case was community spread. All four cases in Brevig were close contact, and the first case in Wales was travel related.
Between Friday, October 22, and Sunday, October 24, NSHC identified 39 COVID-19 cases in the region, including 27 in Nome, 10 in Brevig Mission, and two in Elim.
Seventeen of the Nome cases are considered close contact spreads, while six were community spread and four were travel related. All 10 cases in Brevig Mission were close contacts, and both cases in Elim were community spread.
On Monday, October 25, NSHC identified 18 additional COVID-19 cases in the region, including 9 in Nome, 4 in Brevig Mission, 3 in Elim, 1 in Shaktoolik and 1 in Wales. NSHC encourages anyone who visited the Arctic Native Brotherhood Club or the Common Council meeting on Monday night to watch closely for symptoms and to get tested for COVID, as they may have been exposed to a COVID-positive individual.
“We’re just hoping that Nome cases start slowing down,” said NSHC medical director Dr. Mark Peterson. “We are continuing to get a lot of positives. It’s going to continue for a while. We’re likely to see another 60 people, minimum, in the next two weeks that turn positive just because of close contacts.”
If current trends continue, Peterson says, the region should expect about a third of currently quarantined residents to eventually test positive in close-contact cases.
“When you have 95 positives, that means you’ll have 200, maybe 250 people, maybe even 300 people in quarantine,” he explained during the weekly COVID-19 call with tribal leadership. “Often, we’re seeing a third of those people in quarantine turn positive. I don’t want to be negative, but if you’ve got 200 people in quarantine and a third of them turn positive, that’s another 60 people turned positive due to close contact.”
Even though unvaccinated people make up just 20 percent of Nome’s population, they account for more than 60 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the city, Peterson said.
“This virus specifically seeks out unvaccinated people,” Peterson said. “If you’re not vaccinated, your chance of getting COVID is really high.”
The risks associated with COVID-19, including severe illness, “long COVID” and death, are also increased in unvaccinated individuals. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reports that, across the state, 73 percent of all cases, 86 percent of all hospitalizations, and 83 percent of deaths in Alaska residents over 12 years of age were in individuals who were not fully vaccinated.
Only 66 percent of the residents across the region are vaccinated, but Peterson hopes the impending FDA approval of a childhood vaccine helps increase those numbers.
“About a third of the people [with active cases] are under 18,” he said during the weekly COVID-19 conference call. “We’re going to have shots for kids aged 5-11 coming soon.”
Though COVID-19 cases in school-aged kids are on the rise, Nome Public Schools Superintendent Jamie Burgess says they don’t plan to offer the online-only school again, like they did in the early days of the pandemic.
“We’ve been seeing kind of an uptick in cases in our community, and some of those cases are in children,” she told the Nugget. “The only time we would actually [transition to online learning] is if we have indications that transmissions are occurring within the schools.”
At this point in time, Burgess said, the schools have not found evidence that transmission is occurring in the classroom, though that could change.
“These things can change from one half day to another half day,” explained Peterson. “If we feel like there is spread within a classroom, we’ll quarantine that classroom. There’s no question about it. If it looks like there’s a cluster and community spread within that classroom, we’ll quarantine that classroom. At the same time, we want to avoid that simply because we know that in-person learning is better.”
Peterson said he communicates with school district staff, including Burgess, almost daily regarding COVID-19 in the district.
During Monday’s COVID-19 call, one caller identified themselves as a parent of a child in the school district that tested positive for COVID.
“I saw what happened in my daughter’s classroom where she tested positive, and then days later someone else in her class tested positive, and they’re already at four students alone in her classroom that have tested positive,” the caller said.
Burgess says the school district is following CDC and FDA-related guidelines when it comes to COVID-19, including regarding close contacts and contact tracing.
“This year, we have new guidelines from the CDC as far as close contacts,” Burgess told the Nugget. “The new CDC guidelines say that in schools where universal masking is well practiced, and there are other mitigation measures that we have in place, students within a classroom are not considered close contacts. Out of an abundance of caution, the hospital team sometimes recommends to those families that they test their students, but the school district is not responsible for that. We don’t identify close contacts, and we provide information to public health or to Norton Sound’s COVID response teams, and they’re the ones who determine close contacts.”
On Friday afternoon, Nome’s City Manager Glenn Steckman announced a new emergency ordinance limiting occupancy in Nome’s bars to 25 percent capacity, effective Saturday night at 12:01 a.m., until midnight on November 14. In response, several Nomeites have expressed concerns that the City is focusing its COVID mitigation efforts on the bars and restaurants in town, rather than the schools. During Monday’s COVID-19 conference call, one caller said: “In Nome, they’re limiting access to the bars, but I think [the district] needs to consider quarantine or closing the classrooms of students that test positive.”
“A lot of the responsibility falls on the bar owners to enforce these regulations,” Steckman told the Nugget. “If we hear of a violation with the bar owners, we’ll have to sit down and have a conversation about that. We’re trying to get people — and in most cases, people are —to cooperate because they understand the seriousness of this recent outbreak.”
Steckman said the City had received reports of COVID-19 spreading in Nome’s bars, and regulations on restaurants could be next if cases don’t plateau.
Friday’s emergency ordinance is just one step the City is taking regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. During Monday’s Common Council meeting, council members will hear a first reading of Ordinance No. O-21-10-01, “an emergency ordinance prohibiting the sale of alcohol in Nome other than by authorized licensees holding a package store license.”
The ordinance does not prohibit grocery stores like Hanson’s or AC from selling alcoholic beverages but would limit bars and restaurants from serving alcohol throughout the duration of the ordinance, set to expire at midnight on November 14.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Peterson said of the ordinance. “A significant number of younger people anywhere from 18 to 40 who are getting COVID… they gather together in bars and so on, so I think it does make sense to combat that.”
Peterson says vaccinations are the best way to combat future COVID-19 spread and is supportive of local businesses mandating them.
“I know it’s controversial in the country, but truly, the vaccines are the way to get out of this pandemic,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of pushback from a lot of people not wanting to get the vaccine, and it’s a free country and people don’t have to, but until a community is fully vaccinated, it’s going to have COVID cases and situations like this. Look at us. We’re almosdt 80 percent vaccinated in Nome, and we almost have 100 cases, because there’s still 20, 25 percent of the population that’s not vaccinated and the Delta variant is finding them.”
City and hospital leadership are encouraging Nomeites to take the pandemic seriously and to get vaccinated while they prepare for increasing COVID-19 cases, worsening weather conditions and the seasonal flu.
“Up until about a week ago, we had not had anybody pass away from COVID,” Steckman said. “We can’t say that a week later.”
Across Alaska, there have been a total of 135,696 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, including 4,372 in the last week. In the state, there have been 3,103 hospitalizations, including 241 currently hospitalized and 37 on ventilators. Around the state, only 22 ICU beds remain available, and 703 individuals have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in March 2020.
In Nome, Norton Sound and the Bering Strait region, there have been 1,360 cases of COVID-19, 17 hospitalizations and two deaths.
This article reflects an update from the print version in the 10/28/2021 edition of The Nome Nugget.
