Haines daily COVID case count declines, but officials call for continued precautions

Haines is seeing a decline in new COVID cases. As of Wednesday night, five new positive cases were identified – including one case in Klukwan – with nine released from isolation, bringing the total active cases to 47. KHNS’ Corinne Smith checked in with the Haines EOC Commander Carolann Wooten on the latest.

KHNS: On Wednesday, let’s see, it was reported that there were five new positive cases, Tuesday there were 3 new cases, on Monday there were 13. What can you say about that downward trend we’re seeing?

Wooten:  “It’s a positive step in the right direction. And what you’re seeing is the reason why we’re really having a downward trend is because people are clearing out. But we are still continuing to see positive cases. And so for me, I’m more concerned with, are we still seeing positive cases? So yeah, it’s positive, we want to keep going in that direction. But we are also monitoring it very, very closely.

KHNS: And are there any updates on more demographic information on those positive COVID cases? Like age? Do we know anything about vaccine status or kind of number of positives in a household? What can you share about that part of the outbreak?

Wooten: “Well, I do not have vaccine status or households, that kind of thing. I mean, that’s just not information that we’re getting. Part of that I think is because Public Health (in Juneau) has been so swamped. But I did get an email from Public Health last night, and I can tell you kind of how our breakdown is. By age, we had zero to 20 year olds, there were 11 positive cases – this is in our entire breakout that we’ve had in the last week and a half, two weeks, almost two weeks tomorrow, right? (Among) 21 to 30 year olds, six cases. 31 to 40 year olds, 19 cases. 41 to 50 year olds 12 cases, 51 to 60 year olds 14 cases. 61 to 70 year old seven cases, and 71 and 95 year olds 11 cases.

KHNS: Wow. So it’s really spread out there.

Wooten: It is very spread out. And I can tell you, there were 37 male cases and 43 female cases. That’s what she gave me last night. 

KHNS: Do you have any breakdown between Haines in the town site and Klukwan? 

Wooten: No, I do not. I do know there was one case in Klukwan that was reported yesterday (Wednesday), but that’s the only thing I know.

KHNS: Have there been any hospitalizations?

Wooten: I am not being told if there are hospitalizations. My understanding, what I have been told is it seems as though most (cases) are pretty mild. And people are managing it just by quarantining at home. Like I said, again, they (SEARHC) don’t share that information with me if someone is hospitalized or not.

KHNS: Do you think that more information will come out on this outbreak, maybe as the numbers decline and SEARHC kind of regains capacity, we’ll hear more about how this outbreak actually looked?

Wooten: Yeah, we might get it. I think if we get it from anywhere, we’re likely to get it from Public Health. But they’re also dealing with a breakout across the entire state. So it took I know, it took public health a couple of days after this outbreak started to just to even get caught up with new cases. 

But they are, you know, we were all scrambling to try to meet the needs of what’s going on in the community. And I understand oftentimes the community feels like they’re not that they need more information, but we put out everything that we get. And so we try to keep everybody as informed as we are.

KHNS: Is there anything else our listeners should know at this time?

Wooten: I think that I just appreciate all the effort that everybody has put into helping to make our community safe, safe. A lot of businesses made the determination of their own volition, which is always best to restrict the number of people in their facility to offer curbside service or alternative ways of frequenting the businesses. And I really appreciate that that is huge, because, you know, we’re all scared. But we need our economy to continue to move forward, too. And so not having to mandate shutting stuff down is, I think, really key. I think we need to work together to try to do what’s best for the community.

​​And the other thing is, I would say do not forget about taking care of your physical well being as in taking care of making sure you’re getting proper nutrition and vitamins and getting some exercise and remember about mental health effects. Because we are now almost two years into a disaster. We’ve got COVID that’s been going on since March of last year. And we have a December event. We’ve dealt with a lot of trauma in the last year and people do need to be concerned about mental health.

KHNS:  Thank you so much, Carolyn.

Wooten: Sure. No problem. Thank you.