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The Anchorage Assembly has lifted an emergency order restriction on ice sports that required hockey players to test for COVID-19 before indoor competitions.
At its meeting on Tuesday, the Assembly also voted down a push by three members to revoke some of the city’s COVID-19 emergency orders. The proposal would have removed emergency orders that are “restrictive on public behavior” but would have left in place some orders, including those allowing retailers to use plastic bags and for curbside alcohol and marijuana sales, according to the amendment.
Assembly members Forrest Dunbar and Suzanne LaFrance proposed the changes to the emergency order removing the testing restriction for hockey players, which had elicited opposition from many people in the community.
The resolution strikes language from Emergency Order 18′s stipulations for organized sports, which required ice sports participants to get a negative COVID-19 test before competing indoors.
Some leaders in the hockey community during testimony at recent Assembly meetings said they felt the sport, and the kids playing it, had been unfairly singled out by heavy-handed restrictions.
Dunbar said that because of the testing restrictions, hockey players had been traveling to competitions outside the municipality, where players might contract COVID-19, posing a public health risk. By removing the testing restriction, he said players might be more likely to stay in the municipality to compete.
Many travel to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, where COVID-19 case rates are more than two times higher than in Anchorage, he said.
“If I thought that it hadn’t increased that flow, I might not be proposing this, but I do think it has led to more travel than is usual,” he said.
Acting Mayor Austin Quinn Davidson’s Emergency Order 18 requirements for organized sports said that teams should not travel outside of the municipality for competitions and practices.
Pre-competition COVID-19 testing is now only required for indoor wrestling competition, according to the amendment.
The motion to lift the testing requirement passed in a 9-1 vote, with member Meg Zaletel offering the lone no vote.
Assembly members Jamie Allard, John Weddleton and Crystal Kennedy put forth the proposed amendment that would have revoked most of the city’s emergency orders, including those orders that place capacity restrictions on businesses and require people to wear masks indoors in public.
That amendment was voted down in a 7-3 vote.
Before the vote, Allard and Weddleton implored the other members to consider taking action, pointing to dropping COVID-19 rates in the city and vaccine availability.
Their proposal would have kept the emergency proclamation in place, allowing the acting mayor to react quickly to any changes in the pandemic and reinstate restrictions if necessary, Weddleton said.
He said it was time for the city to rely on individual actions and choices to keep the pandemic in check.
“If not now, then when do we do it? When COVID-19 (is) gone? That’s never,” Weddleton said. “When 70% or more of our population has been vaccinated? I’m sorry — that’s never. When there are no threats of this virus or mutation of any virus on the horizon? That’s never. That’s the human condition.”
Still, other members said they thought the proposal came too soon.
“Why move backwards when we are so close to the finish line?” Zaletel said.
She said that Emergency Order 18 is allowing the city to reopen slowly and carefully, and that revoking it could put at risk the ability for more students to return to classrooms. High schools are scheduled to reopen for in-person classes in the spring quarter.
“We’re not at the point yet of being able to let up on all the restrictions just because we’ve got 20% of the population with one (vaccine) shot,” said Janet Johnston, epidemiologist with the Anchorage Health Department.
Johnston said that new, more contagious variants of the virus are circulating in Alaska, posing a big concern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also not yet released guidance about what is safe for people to do once they have been vaccinated, and there is not enough data yet to know if they could still be asymptomatic carriers of the virus, she said.
“We’re just at that point we can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Johnston said. “It’s so close that to let up now and risk having cases really take off with variants, or just people getting sick who really don’t need to — I just think it’s too soon.”
Assembly member Kameron Perez-Verdia, who voted against revoking the emergency orders, said that it was a difficult choice.
“I am a very, very hesitant, no vote on this. I am ready for these to end, and I think that we all are,” he said.