Nome mourns first COVID-19 death, case numbers continue to rise

By Julia Lerner
More than a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, Nome has seen the first COVID-related death last week.
On Wednesday morning, a Nome resident died of COVID-19. The individual, a man in his 60s, passed away after being medevaced to a hospital in Anchorage. NSHC said in a press release that next of kin have been notified.
COVID-19 cases across the Nome, Norton Sound and Bering Strait region are rising. As of Tuesday, there are 113 active COVID-19 cases in eight regional communities: 64 in Nome, 34 in Brevig Mission, four in Unalakleet, four in Shaktoolik, four in Elim, one in Koyuk, one in Stebbins, and one in Shishmaref.
In the last week, NSHC identified 83 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of active cases in the region to 113.
On Wednesday, NSHC identified 15 new COVID-19 cases, including nine in Brevig Mission, four in Nome, one in Shishmaref and one in Unalakleet. One of the individuals who tested positive on Wednesday is a NSHC employee, but did not have any contact with patients, according to a NSHC press release.
The following day, 20 individuals in the region tested positive for COVID-19, including 11 in Brevig, seven in Nome and two in Shaktoolik. One case in Nome and both cases in Shaktoolik were travel-related cases.
Over the weekend, NSHC identified an additional 26 new COVID-19 cases, including 20 in Nome, three in Brevig, two in Elim and one in Koyuk.
On Monday, Oct. 18, patients in five communities received positive COVID-19 test results: 13 in Nome, three in Unalakleet, three in Brevig Mission, two in Shaktoolik and one in Stebbins. In Nome, five of the new cases were close contacts to previously identified cases, one case was travel-related and seven were community spread. In Brevig Mission, two of the cases were close contacts and one was community spread. In Shaktoolik, of the cases was travel-related, and one was a close contact. In Unalakleet and in Stebbins, the cases were travel-related.
“In the Lower 48, cases are on the downslide for the most part,” said Norton Sound Health Corporation medical director Dr. Mark Peterson. “Case rates are dropping. Hospitalizations and deaths are dropping. They’re not zero by any means, but they’re starting to fall.”
Across the state of Alaska, though, is a different story.
“Case numbers are staying high,” Peterson says. “We can’t really say that there’s a trend down yet. There seems to be a little bit of a trend down, but we’re not necessarily seeing that consistently across the state. Time will tell.”
Because COVID-19 cases are not falling as quickly as hoped, Nome’s City Manager Glenn Steckman announced the City’s face mask mandate will be extend until midnight on October 31. The original mandate, which took effect on October 2, was slated to end on October 15.
“We are approaching the number that is … when we ended up shutting down the restaurants [last year],” Steckman told Nome’s Planning Commission on Tuesday, October 12. “I don’t see that happening. … I don’t see us doing testing, but we will probably extend the mask requirement another two weeks because I don’t see the counts tumbling.”
Once active cases in the region fall below 40, Steckman said the mask mandate will go away.
“If the cases drop down below 40, we may wait a couple days, and if they continue to trend down, we’ll pull the mask requirement away,” he said. Though the mask mandate will go away when cases fall below 40, Steckman says the goal is to get active cases in the community even lower.
“The goal is to try to get that active number down around 30 or less,” he told the Nugget.
Steckman says the city has asked the Chamber of Commerce to deliver face masks to businesses if they need them, and that both adult and child-size masks are available at City Hall. Steckman says he does not plan to change current COVID-19 safety measures in the city. There are no plans to go back to mandatory testing at the airport and he does not foresee city employee vaccine mandates at this point, although he is considering a testing mandate for unvaccinated city employees who interact with the public.
“There is a national shortage of rapid tests, but if we could get the rapid tests up here, it would make me feel more comfortable that we’re getting a more accurate understanding if they’ve already had some exposure from the virus,” he said. “The Delta variant is, frankly, aggressively hunting non-vaccinated individuals.”
Vaccination rates in the region are slowly creeping up, Peterson said during Monday’s COVID-19 tribal leadership conference call.
“The number of people vaccinated has slowly, slowly inched up,” he said. “The shots for children ages 5-11 are sounding like they’re coming in November, and we’re slowly getting ready. We’ll be making those available and sending teams out to get kids vaccinated in the region.”
A research team from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is encouraging anyone who received the Johnson & Johnson single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to get a second booster dose of the shot.
“For Johnson & Johnson, it’s good news that they’re recommending that booster,” Peterson said. “That booster is recommended just two months after your initial shot, so we will give you that if you got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.”
For individuals who received Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, booster shots are available at the NSHC pharmacy in Nome or in village clinics.
“If you had Pfizer, you can get Moderna as a booster, and if you got Moderna, you can get Pfizer as a booster,” Peterson said. “If you’re 65 and older, get a booster. If you are 64 and work in an environment where you might be exposed to a lot of people or have medical issues that could make COVID-19 worse for you, you should get a booster. Everybody else, you’re welcome to get the booster, but the F.D.A is not requiring it for you.”
COVID-19 vaccinations are available at all NSHC locations. In a village, individuals can contact their local clinic for vaccination arrangements. At the Nome Airport, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are offered to all incoming passengers 12 years and older.
Across Alaska, there have been a total of 127,767 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, including 6,430 in the last week. In the state, there have been 2,911 hospitalizations, including 202 individuals currently hospitalized with the virus and 22 on ventilators. Around the state, only 21 ICU beds remain available, and 617 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 1,236 cases of COVID-19, 15 hospitalizations and one death.