The City and Borough of Juneau announced 26 new COVID-19 cases among Juneau residents Thursday.
Eleven are part of a new cluster among employees at the Mendenhall Auto Center, which closed to the public earlier this week. According to a city media release, half of the business’s 65 employees have been tested and the other half were expected to be tested Thursday.
Public Health believes the risk to people who visited the auto center is low because the business closed quickly and had health measures in place.
But because of a surge in new cases and the state’s backlog, thorough contact tracing is strained. According to the city, that means it’s not clear where many of the residents who tested positive recently got the virus.
There are three people with the virus being treated at Bartlett Regional Hospital.
Statewide, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reported 355 new people with COVID-19 and six more deaths, though it’s not clear how many of them happened recently.
Those who died include a woman in her 80s from Fairbanks, a woman in her 70s from the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, a woman in her 80s from Anchorage and two men from Anchorage in their 70s. One person died out of state.
