The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services recently announced that they will no longer update their COVID-19 Data Hub on the weekends or state holidays, meaning that state case count summaries won’t be posted till that Monday, for example, with included aggregated numbers for the previous days.
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent John O’Brien spoke to KSRM to say that Monday’s numbers continue that trend of numbers going down, “For the Kenai Peninsula, before I get into the numbers, I would like to thank everyone in the entire Kenai Peninsula Borough for doing their part in helping limit the COVID-19 exposure throughout the community by wearing their masks, washing hands, keeping six-feet of physical distance when possible, keeping circles small and then following mitigation plans. I know it’s been hard, we’re all tired. People are tired of wearing masks, but I got to tell you, it is working and when we look at the three-day numbers that came in over the weekend, we have a gain of 14 on the Kenai Peninsula Borough, and we lost seven. It’s a net gain of seven since Friday.”
Comparing the COVID-19 numbers to the rest of Alaska, O’Brien says that the Kenai Peninsula fared really well. He says that the numbers for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, with several schools being closed, 117 cases were reported over that aggregated time period.
O’Brien elaborated on the KPBSD’s stance on the wearing of facemasks moving forward, “School districts that have had tight mitigations and fidelity with mask wearing are not seeing numbers going up. Those districts that, in certain aspects, activities in particular that are going maskless, numbers are pretty scary and creeping up. My concern, number one, is academics and keeping kids in school for the rest of the year. We’re going to do everything we can to do that.”
According to the KPBSD COVID-19 data dashboard, Central, Southern and Eastern Peninsula schools are operating in the medium risk category, which is defined as average daily incidence over the past 14 days seeing 5-10 cases per 100,000 people with moderate community transmission with some undetected cases and infrequent discrete outbreaks. That means that buildings are open with possible social (physical) distancing protocols in place.
Parents also have the option to have their students continue learning remotely.