Mayor Berkowitz: Anchorage is in a ‘hyper vigilant position’ as COVID-19 cases spike

An increase in COVID-19 cases has put Anchorage city officials on high alert.

“We have a much higher level of concern this week than we did last,” Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said in a Friday afternoon community briefing.

Berkowitz said he is not actively considering reimposing a stay-at-home mandate like the “hunker down” order that closed many Anchorage businesses in March and April.

“I don’t want to go back to hunker down,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of businesses, I don’t think a lot of people want to go back to hunker down. So this is really important for people to exercise their personal responsibility.”

Instead, he called on Anchorage residents to wear masks in public, keep their social bubbles small and wash their hands.

“The number of cases are climbing,” Berkowitz said. “We still have limited supplies. The public health capacity is stretched thin, and we are in a hyper-vigilant position.”

Berkowitz’s comments come after about two weeks of steady increases in cases, culminating in an all-time high of active cases in the state this week. The rise in cases followed the lifting of state and local mandates limiting business operations and interstate travel; officials implemented those reopening measures after a sustained period of low daily case counts.

As of Friday, there are a total of 107 active cases in Anchorage, said Natasha Pineda, director of the Anchorage Health Department. There have been two deaths in Anchorage in the past week.

Both deaths involve residents at the Providence Transitional Care Center in East Anchorage, with the second death coming Thursday. An outbreak at the facility continues, and as of Friday, 18 residents and 27 employees had tested positive.

[Alaska’s 12th virus death involves another resident at Anchorage care center dealing with outbreak]

The city bases its decisions about pandemic-related measures in part on several public health metrics, such as hospital capacity, case transmission rates and personal protective equipment for front-line workers. The metrics are rated on a red, yellow and green scale. When the city allowed businesses to operate at fully capacity, the only metric that wasn’t green-lit was PPE.

“We have yellow-lit all the high-level measures, as well as a total of five of the eight sub-measures,” Pineda said.

The “R-naught,” which is the number of new cases expected to stem from a single case, has increased toward a critical growth, Berkowitz said. The rate of spread needs to decline by 15% to 20%, he said.

“We need to slow down,” Berkowitz said. “We are not through the pandemic. It is not over. We are in a position where individual actions matter as much as they ever have."

[2 employees at Homer assisted-living home test positive for coronavirus]

During the community briefing, the mayor was asked if he is concerned that large gatherings to support the Black Lives Matter movement could contribute to an increase in cases. Berkowitz said he’s concerned about large gatherings in general, and Pineda said she’s not aware of any cases stemming from those demonstrations.

Berkowitz has been supportive of people participating in those demonstrations, and voiced support of upcoming Juneteenth celebrations. Juneteenth is a holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

One key to keeping virus rates down is wearing masks in public, Berkowitz said. However, he said it’s hard to mandate masks because it’s near-impossible to enforce. He said while he, like others, doesn’t enjoy wearing a mask, there needs to be a recommitment to such precautions.

“What we’re finding over time is that as the political opposition to mask-wearing falls away because of the scientific evidence and the public health evidence, more and more people are beginning to wear masks, and that makes a huge difference,” Berkowitz said.

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