{"id":63062,"date":"2020-08-27T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/angoon-sees-climbing-case-count-as-testing-continues\/"},"modified":"2020-08-27T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T06:30:00","slug":"angoon-sees-climbing-case-count-as-testing-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/angoon-sees-climbing-case-count-as-testing-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"Angoon sees climbing case count as testing continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angoon Mayor Joshua Bowen said now would be a good time for people to “hold off on your visits.”<\/p>\n

The town, previously inviolate to the spread of the coronavirus, had its first confirmed case earlier in the week, <\/a>which rapidly ballooned to eight and now 10 cases, with one probable, Bowen said.<\/p>\n

“The number of tests done as of last night was 219,” Bowen said in a phone interview. “The number of positives was 10.”<\/p>\n

The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is responsible for carrying out and processing those tests. The whole Admiralty Island community, more than 400 people, is currently being tested, Bowen said.<\/p>\n

[Man found dead at construction site, JPD investigating<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n

“They’re being sent over to Sitka. They were testing all day today,” Bowen said. “The local PA (physician’s assistant) was saying they were looking at doing another round next week.”<\/p>\n

Testing the entire community is a standard Department of Health and Social Services technique during this pandemic, said Clinton Bennett, a spokesperson for the DHSS.<\/p>\n

“In general with outbreaks, testing can be handled by a few different methods: collecting samples across the community or outbreak area and transporting them all to a high capacity lab for processing,” Bennett said. “If the community or outbreak location is of a smaller size rapid testing platforms can be used. In that situation a local clinic or organization can handle that testing if they have the supplies and staff or a deployed team can travel to that community with rapid testing devices and test the community. All of these methods and variations of (them) have been used throughout Alaska.”<\/p>\n

If the coronavirus spreads further in Angoon, stricter measures will have to be enacted, Bowen said. Current measures include a mask mandate,<\/a> quarantine for anyone confirmed or suspected of having the coronavirus by public health officals a and a two-week self isolation policy alongside a written declaration for all travellers.<\/p>\n

“Beyond what I did with the emergency order, I imagine there’d be a push for a travel lockdown and a hunker-down mandate. Right now it’s just a suggestion,” Bowen said. “Usually there’s cars driving around and people walking around, and we’re not seeing any of that. Last night we had a ferry come in and no one got off.”<\/p>\n

The closure of the Angoon Oil Fuel Dock to contain the spread is the biggest issue for many, Bowen said, confining many to home.<\/p>\n

“We’re kind of being a little forced to with the closure of the fuel station. I think that’s the chief complaint I’m hearing,” Bowen said. “This is prime time for beach seining and gillnetting for subsistence.”<\/p>\n

• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The town has clamped down on all external movement and is testing all citizens. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":63063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-63062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63062"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=63062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}