Adelyn Baxter

Nine cases of COVID-19 have been linked to a seafood processor in Juneau.

According to a release from the City and Borough of Juneau on Friday, eight close contacts of a resident who tested positive for the virus earlier this month also tested positive this week.

The cases are associated with Alaska Glacier Seafoods. Four of the new cases are residents and four are non-residents. All of the individuals are isolating and their close contacts are quarantining.

The first employee started experiencing symptoms July 4th and immediately isolated at home. That individual was reported as positive to the state on July 14th and has since been classified as getting infected through community spread. That means they didn’t travel recently or have close contact with anyone known to have the virus.

The city says Alaska Glacier Seafoods followed its internal COVID-19 response plan by quarantining close contacts from the same work crew a few days after the first employee became symptomatic.

Seventeen close contacts of the initial employee were tested on July 12th, and eight of those tests came back positive this week.

The person with the initial case has since recovered and some of the others may soon be considered recovered as well.

The company is awaiting the results of another 113 employees tested by Capital City Fire/Rescue on Wednesday.

Alaska Glacier Seafoods Business Manager Kristie Erickson said by phone on Friday that no other employees tested positive before this.

She said the company has been working closely with Juneau Public Health Nursing and is doing everything it can to contain the outbreak.

This is a developing story and may be updated as information becomes available.

The filing period to run for local office in Juneau’s municipal election starts Friday. 

Three Juneau Assembly seats and two school board positions are up for grabs in the local election on Oct. 6.

The open Assembly seats include Rob Edwardson’s District 2 seat, Maria Gladziszewski’s areawide seat and Alicia Hughes-Skandijs’s District 1 seat. Assembly members serve three-year terms. 

The city will host a virtual “How to Run for Local Office” workshop at 9 a.m. on Saturday. It’s open to anyone curious about running. Participants must register in advance. 

Candidates have until 4:30 p.m. on Monday, July 27, to submit their applications.

The assembly voted to allow this year’s election to take place by-mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That means most polling places won’t be open on Election Day, but in-person voting will still take place at City Hall from Sept. 21 to Oct. 6. 

The clerk’s office says it hopes to also have another voting location in the Mendenhall Valley available during that time, but details are still being worked out. 

Any registered voter whose address has changed should update their mailing address by Sept. 6 to make sure they get their ballot. 

Voters can also request a ballot at a temporary address if they notify the city by Sept. 6.

General information about the upcoming municipal election can be found on the city website.

This post has been updated. 

The city of Gustavus passed a mandate this week requiring people wear masks or cloth face coverings when outside their homes. 

The mandate applies to all city buildings, grocery and retail stores, restaurants and bars except when customers are eating or drinking and even outdoor areas like docks and floats when social distancing can’t be maintained. 

The mandate includes exceptions for young children and people with medical conditions or hearing or speech impairment. 

The community of about 450 people bordering Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve has seen one case of COVID-19 so far. An airline passenger tested positive after arriving at the local airport in June. 

The mask mandate is in effect until Oct. 1. 

The state reported 116 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday. It’s the largest single-day increase and the first time the state has seen over 100 cases in one day.

According to the state health department, 93 Alaskans and 23 non-residents tested positive. The numbers reflect results received during the previous 24-hours.

No new deaths were reported over the weekend.

On Saturday, the state reported 77 new cases, prompting Chief Medical Officer Anne Zink to tweet “We are moving in the wrong direction.”

The resident cases from Sunday include 29 new cases in Anchorage, 19 in Fairbanks, seven in Palmer, six in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census area, four each in Soldotna, Cordova and Wasilla, three each in Eagle River, Kenai and Juneau, two each in Chugiak, North Pole and the Nome Census Area and one each in Seward, Kodiak, Nome, Bethel Census area and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Eleven of the non-resident cases were connected to the seafood industry in Valdez.

That brings the total number of Alaska resident cases to 1,479. There have been 295 non-resident cases.

Twenty-seven Alaskans are currently hospitalized due to COVID-19.

There were four new cases reported in the City and Borough of Juneau over the weekend: one on Saturday and three on Sunday. How those individuals contracted the virus is still under investigation. Since March, 51 Juneau residents have tested positive for COVID-19. Six cases are currently active.

Seasonal summer workers were laid off in droves this spring as it became clear that cruise ship passengers wouldn’t be coming to Juneau due to the pandemic. 

Thanks to a Depression-era style conservation corps paid for with local CARES Act funds, some of them are now getting back to work. 

On an unusually warm day, Kanaan Bausler demonstrated how to use a plate compactor on loose gravel outside the maintenance shed at the city-owned Eaglecrest Ski Area. 

Some of the members of Juneau’s newly formed COVID-19 Conservation Corps gathered around him at a safe distance.  

Dave Scanlan is the general manager of the ski hill, and helped propose the idea for the conservation corps to the city. He’s proud of the fact that two weeks after the Juneau Assembly approved funding, they were already putting people ready to work. He said they had more than 40 applicants for just 10 crew positions. 

“We’ve got a helicopter pilot, a hiking guide, a boat captain (and) a mechanic,” he said. “So it’s a really great diversity of people that have been affected by COVID, and their typical summer work just doesn’t exist right now.”

The Assembly approved $1 million in CARES Act funding for the conservation corps in June. The money is shared between Eaglecrest, Juneau’s Parks and Recreation Department and Trail Mix, a local non-profit that improves trail access around the community. 

Parks and Recreation reports hiring eight crew members from about 36 applicants. Trail Mix hired nine crew members and two leads. Trail Mix Executive Director Ryan O’Shaughnessy said they still have a few openings.

At Eaglecrest, the crew will focus mainly on mountain biking trails that make up just one element of the ski area’s ambitious summer development plan. The goal is to eventually turn the mountain into a year-round destination, catering to cruise ship passengers and independent travelers.

“And by the time we’ve learned how to control the pandemic, hopefully we’ll have this new infrastructure that will be available and ready to welcome our visitors back to Juneau,” Scanlan said. 

This is their second day of training, and for many of them, it’s the first time they’ve been around this kind of equipment. 

“It’s actually pretty fun. Lots of vibration. I feel like my arms are gonna be pretty, pretty loose at the end of the day,” said Jessica Davis after trying the compactor. She’s one of two women on the crew. “It’s a lot easier to move it around on flat ground than it appeared. But I’m sure getting up there and doing berms and stuff’s gonna be a whole ‘nother story.”

Davis has lived in Juneau for eight years. She spent the last four summers captaining an Allen Marine whale watching boat. Now she’ll be making a little under $20 an hour building trails four days a week on the mountain. 

“I’m used to working up to 80-hour work weeks and just crazy hours, sometimes 2 a.m. starts in the morning for Tracy Arm tours,” Davis said. “Just having a normal set schedule and having a three-day weekend, it’s going to be really nice.”

She also works part-time at Eaglecrest in the winter teaching snowboard lessons, but she’s been out of work since Allen Marine laid off most of its seasonal staff in mid-March. 

“It wasn’t really a for sure thing until Canada closed their borders to the cruise ships, and then we’re like ‘wow, there’s no ships, no tourists to go out and watch whales.’ So then it really kind of come to a realization that I needed to start looking for other work,” she said. 

According to Rain Coast Data, Juneau’s unemployment rate was nearly 11% in May. That’s normally the time of year when tourism is really picking up, bringing in thousands of seasonal jobs for the five-month season. 

Since the pandemic arrived early in the year, most of the non-resident workers that typically arrive in April and May never made it here. Still, hundreds of local residents who rely on seasonal work, like teachers or ski area employees, were out of luck. 

Davis said she’ll miss the water while she’s up on the mountain this year. She’s used to seeing her favorite whales and their calves day-in and day-out during the summer. 

The work will be an adjustment too. 

“Definitely a lot more physical work. I’ll go from drinking coffee in the wheelhouse to hiking up mountains and shoveling and hauling rocks and dirt, nice and heavy equipment. So yeah, I’m excited for the change,” Davis said. 

Eaglecrest plans to keep the crew working until snow falls again on the mountain.

At least one small cruise company will not sail in Alaska this summer. 

American Cruise Lines announced Tuesday that it has canceled its season due to the spike in COVID-19 cases in other parts of the country. 

The company is one of a handful with ships that aren’t subject to federal and international restrictions on larger ships with 250 passengers or more. 

Norwegian Cruise Line was the last major cruise ship company with tentative plans to visit Alaska this season. But it ended the suspense on Monday by canceling its few remaining sailings.

Small cruise lines offered one potential way to salvage some business amid the pandemic, even though their passengers represent a very small portion of the 1.4 million passengers that would have visited this year.  

According to the most recent email update from Tourism Best Management Practices in Juneau, three other small cruise ships companies could still visit Southeast port communities. 

The email on Monday said that Sitka-based Alaskan Dream Cruises suspended sailings until the end of July and National Geographic hoped to resume sailings in mid-August. 

Dan Blanchard, owner of Juneau-based UnCruise Adventures, said in an email Wednesday the company plans to start sailing Aug. 1 until Sept. 5. Passengers will fly in and out of Juneau and the ships will not stop in any other communities. 

“All wilderness adventures with no contact with others outside the vessel,” Blanchard wrote in the email. He added that all trips will involve 40 guests at most. 

Visits from small cruise ships have been a subject of debate in recent weeks. The Ketchikan Assembly had voted to allow an American Cruise Lines ship to dock in July. This week, the Skagway Assembly asked the ship not to come.