Governor Mike Dunleavy held a press conference on Monday, joined by Senior Medical Officer Dr. Alexander Eastman, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They discussed his upcoming tour to assess Alaska’s preparedness for COVID-19.
Dr. Eastman offered details on why he is in Alaska, saying he’s visiting states where responses to the pandemic are working: “I’ve had the pleasure of running a very small team of talented operators who have come together to try to go to places where the response has been active, to try to help those jurisdictions in any way we can. The orders are simple: deliver the absolute best of what the federal government has, the full array of resources to provide the necessary tactical assistance on the ground in those locations and then, again, to deliver real-world ground-truth back to the folks in Washington who need to have that information to make high-quality decisions.”
He said that he expects good things when it comes to fishing season in Alaska: “We’ve obviously got our eyes on upcoming events here, and certainly the start of the summertime commercial fishing season. I hope, over the next few days, we’ll be able to really deliver some high-quality high-impact ‘wins’ as we travel the state.”
The Governor says that he will be briefed on the doctor’s findings after traveling the state: “We’re trying to get a real comprehensive cross-section of the state from different parts of the state, especially in rural Alaska. We’ll debrief when the doctors get back here later on this week to find out what protocols we need to put into place in terms of capacity, testing, etc. This is an exercise we constantly go through, every day, having these discussions about what more we need, what more we need to do, what’s the latest science, what’s the information telling us.”