Petersburg school buildings reopen to in-person classes Thursday morning.
The school district made that announcement Wednesday afternoon. The two-day building closure started Tuesday following the announcement of positive test results for a fifth grade student and parent.
District officials say contact tracing has been completed by public health tracers. They say students and staff who were instructed to quarantine should continue to do so until they’ve completed that quarantine. That means the entire fifth grade class and several close contacts elsewhere in the district.
School, public health and medical center staff will be answering questions about the recent closure and contact tracing today on KFSK from 12:30-1:30 and we will take your calls and questions. 772-3808 or email questions in advance to joe@kfsk.org.
Meanwhile, Petersburg emergency officials have announced another COVID-19 positive case in the community, unrelated to the student and parent positives. It’s a local resident in the same household that already had two positives reported on Tuesday evening this week. This person had already been directed to quarantine due to close contact with family members already infected.
These three COVID cases may be related to recent travel to Anchorage. Health officials say the three cases in this household are not connected to the fifth grade student and parent with a positive test result from earlier Tuesday.
Petersburg’s emergency operations center says the risk of COVID spread outside of this household is low. However, the EOC says the risk within the community is rising.
Petersburg now has six active cases and a total of 25 identified among both residents and non-residents since the start of the pandemic.
Public health tracers are investigating close contacts and instructing them to quarantine.
The Petersburg Medical Centers COVID hotline is 772-5788.
