COVID cases among non-residents aboard ships highest all summer
July 28, 2022
Covid cases have spiked again in Haines in recent weeks, driven by a new variant and an influx of tourists, according to health officials.
Infection numbers for cruise ship travelers to Alaska last week was double the rate of the previous four weeks.
A highly infectious variant of the coronavirus is pushing up case counts in Alaska and nationwide, though illnesses are less severe and hospitalization rates much lower than in previous waves, state and federal health officials report.
The state’s coronavirus data dashboard reported seven new cases in Haines for the seven days ending July 20, down from nine in the prior seven days. The community’s total is 717 reported infections since the pandemic count started in March 2020, though state health officials acknowledge that the increased use of at-home tests means many cases are not reported.
Stephanie Pattison, clinic administrator for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) clinic in Haines, said the borough has seen a spike in “the last couple weeks.” She also confirmed that much of the spread seems to be either “travel-related” or brought in by tourists, some of whom are seeking medical care at the local clinic.
Pattison said the new variant is “running rampant throughout Southeast Alaska, not just Haines.” She stressed that the official numbers underrepresent true counts because they only report tests taken in the Haines clinic; Pattison said most people these days are self-testing, often using kits the health center is distributing for free.
While the state dashboard shows new infections reported in Haines have declined since May, when weekly case counts reached 15, cases among cruise ship and tour boat travelers to Alaska last week were at their highest level all summer.
The state on July 20 said 1,021 infections were reported over the past seven days among non-residents in Alaska “at-sea, purpose tourism.” That is more than double the weekly count of at-sea non-resident cases, which averaged 483 per week from mid-June to mid-July.
The increase in cases among visitors has not been limited to ship passengers and crew. More than 370 infections were reported in the past month among non-resident tourists in the Denali Borough, which includes hotels and shops serving Denali National Park and Preserve, according to the state’s July 20 web posting.
In Skagway, one of the most heavily visited tourism destinations in Southeast, 11 of 14 cases reported last week were among non-resident travelers, the state Health Department reported.
In Valdez, 31 of 35 infections reported July 20 were among non-residents in town for the seafood industry.
Alaska’s seven-day case rate among residents, based only on reported test results and not at-home tests, shows that most regions of the state were seeing higher levels of virus spread. Alaska’s seven-day per-capita case rate was fifth-highest among U.S. states as of July 21, according to a federal tracker website.
Meanwhile, a program run by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide information about COVID levels aboard cruise ships has ended. The CDC the past two years actively monitored outbreaks on cruise ships, using a color-coded chart to show the public the varying levels of transmission.
The agency said it decided to end the tracking program for cruises in part because it believes the industry is capable of managing the risks on its own.
“There is no doubt COVID is aboard cruise ships, just as there is COVID spreading locally and abroad. We don’t have a way to determine if local COVID is being driven by ship traffic or the reverse,” Juneau Deputy City Manager Robert Barr told the Juneau Empire last week.
The industry has been in the spotlight since the beginning of the pandemic, including several high-profile instances of infection clusters before the advent of vaccines and effective quarantine policies.
The number of passengers booking cruises crashed over the past two years. In 2020 and 2021, cruise companies lost a collective $63 billion and shed thousands of jobs, according to industry data.
“CDC has determined that the cruise industry has access to the necessary tools (e.g., cruise-specific recommendations and guidance, vaccinations, testing instruments, treatment modalities and non-pharmaceutical interventions) to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 on board,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. “Therefore, CDC’s COVID-19 program for cruise ships is no longer in effect as of today (July 18).”
Individual cruise lines may set their own policies, such as travel requirements for passengers and staff, as well as what protocols are implemented aboard ships.
The Juneau Empire contributed to this report.