Fifty-six workers at the Copper River Seafoods processing plant in Anchorage have tested positive for COVID-19, the Anchorage Health Department said in a statement Friday night, marking the latest outbreak within Alaska’s seafood industry.

Nearly all of the employees at the plant, which employs 134 workers, live in the Municipality of Anchorage, the health department said. Another 30 test results have not yet been returned and 14 workers were not tested, according to the department. Testing was conducted from July 17 to 22.

The Anchorage Health Department and state Department of Health and Social Services’ Section of Epidemiology are working to conduct contact tracing. The two agencies are coordinating with Copper River Seafoods “to control this outbreak as quickly as possible and prevent further spread of the disease among co-workers, family members and the community,” the Anchorage Health Department said.

“This is a concerning situation for the people of Anchorage,” said Dr. Bruce Chandler, disease control and prevention medical officer with the city health department. “With so many workers now testing positive, it is likely that this outbreak has been in progress for some time and that transmission has already occurred among family, friends and others in the community.”

Those who tested positive were told to follow protocols for isolation established by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the city health department said. Employees with negative test results will stay in quarantine and undergo testing every three days until no more cases are identified. Health officials have instructed them and household members of those who test positive — all considered close contacts — to follow guidelines for quarantine and self-monitoring from the CDC, according to the city health department.

Copper River Seafoods closed the plant for disinfection and deep cleaning after the first case was confirmed, the health department said.

The Copper River Seafoods virus cases mark the third-largest outbreak in the state: An OBI Seafoods processing plant in Seward saw 98 cases among workers, and the factory trawler American Triumph identified 85 cases among crew after docking at Dutch Harbor. The fourth-largest outbreak involves 40 cases among workers at the Alaska Glacier Seafoods plant in Juneau.

This week, the state epidemiologist described a change in the makeup of seafood industry workers testing positive for COVID-19. Virus cases within the industry now increasingly involve local residents working at processing plants — individuals going back and forth from the community at large to closed campuses, increasing the risk of the virus spreading from one sphere to another.

Health officials continue to urge the public to wear a face covering in public, keep a distance of 6 feet from people they don’t live with, regularly wash their hands, maintain a small social bubble and avoid big gatherings.

“Anyone who feels even mildly ill is encouraged to get tested,” the city health department said. “If you test positive, please contact your own close contacts if you can, to minimize the time those people might be out in the community, potentially exposing others.”

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The city of Seward became the center of Alaska’s two largest coronavirus outbreaks on Wednesday, with a factory trawler and a local seafood-processing plant where a combined 181 people had tested positive.

The American Seafoods ship carrying 85 infected crew members arrived in Seward from Unalaska on Wednesday afternoon.

After the 286-foot American Triumph moored at Seward’s cruise ship dock, the crew disembarked and were ushered into the waiting buses by the drivers, who were wearing ventilated PPE suits. A handful of onlookers drove by as the crew disembarked, some with binoculars. They were taken to Anchorage.

Also on Wednesday, 96 seafood workers at the OBI Seafoods processing plant in Seward — which employs 262 people — tested positive for the novel coronavirus, causing the plant to temporarily shut down, city officials said.

An employee at the plant first tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, after seeking medical care for an unrelated health issue, the company said. The plant immediately closed so that the company could test all its employees and disinfect the campus.

The cases included 85 nonresident and 11 resident employees, according to a presentation from Alaska’s state medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, at a community briefing on Wednesday.

The OBI outbreak is the latest to hit the seafood industry in Alaska, occurring just days after the 85 crew members aboard the American Triumph tested positive for the virus, and more than 40 became infected at a plant operated by a Juneau fish processor.

“Alaska is currently experiencing three large, separate outbreaks of COVID-19 in the seafood industry,” said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, Alaska’s State Epidemiologist, in a written statement Wednesday evening. “These outbreaks are reminiscent of the meat packing plant outbreaks in the Lower 48 and stress the importance of vigilant symptom screening and prompt facility-wide testing in congregate work settings when index cases are identified.”

Until now, the seafood industry has remained relatively unscathed despite concerns earlier in the year about the influx of out-of-state workers and potential for outbreaks in close quarters, on vessels and in processing plants that could overwhelm the state’s fragile health care system.

In response, 11 seafood companies released a letter — addressed to communities “to confirm our commitment that we are prioritizing health and safety” of local residents — in which they detailed their COVID-19 mitigation plans.

With the exception of some smaller outbreaks in Dillingham and Whittier, the companies’ safety plans appeared to been mostly effective.

From Seward, infected crew from the ship and the plant were headed to Anchorage for isolation or quarantine, officials said. It isn’t clear where the workers will be housed while in the city.

The sudden influx of infected people prompted municipal concerns about Anchorage hospital capacity. OBI Seafoods said in a statement that the “vast majority” of their employees who tested positive are not currently experiencing symptoms of the virus, and none have been hospitalized.

But the possibility that some could get sick enough to need medical care was a factor in Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s decision to issue new restrictions on bars and restaurants Wednesday.

Berkowitz at a briefing said the new restrictions stemmed in part from Anchorage’s role providing medical care for “most of the state” — including infected seafood workers, as well as residents of rural communities that rely on Anchorage hospitals.

“When we’re looking at the hundreds of cases coming in from seafood workers, that will put a burden on our ability to provide capacity for people in Anchorage,” he said. “And so we’re watching the numbers not only inside Anchorage, we’re watching what is happening outside the community.”

OBI Seafoods LLC was formed in June, the result of a merger between major processors Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, and includes five shoreside locations in Alaska.

Earlier this summer, outbreaks were confirmed at two other OBI Seafoods plant locations in Dillingham, where 12 workers tested positive, and at the company’s Excursion Inlet salmon processing plant in Southeast Alaska, where three employees also tested positive in late June.

The company has said it has extensive safety protocols in place to prevent an outbreak like this: All employees upon arrival in Alaska are required to quarantine for 14 days, and are then tested a second time, the company said in a statement. Every OBI employee also goes through a symptom and temperature check each day, according to the company.

But the close quarters and long working hours at fish processing plants can make social distancing difficult.

Annie Berman reported from Anchorage and Loren Holmes from Seward.

• • •

Two Anchorage-based Alaska Airlines customer service agents have tested positive for the coronavirus, leading to the quarantine of about two dozen colleagues who may have come into close contact with them.

The two agents did not work with the public for the majority of their shifts at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport before they tested positive, according to Alaska Airlines spokesman Tim Thompson. They tested positive separately. Their cases were confirmed by the airline in separate emails to employees last Monday and Friday.

There are about a dozen employees in quarantine for each infected agent, Thompson said. Their job duties mostly include training, looking up flights — office work — but sometimes involve helping passengers at the counter or gate.

State officials on Monday reported Alaska’s highest number of new daily confirmed infections since the pandemic began in March — 141, including 64 seafood industry workers — but no new deaths. One hundred people have been hospitalized with the virus in total.

Alaska Airlines also sent Anchorage ground operations employees an email Sunday implementing a mandatory social distancing policy in light of “increasing concern for the spread of COVID-19.”

Under the policy, which was effective immediately, employees need to maintain 6 feet of distance from each other in work and break areas unless there is “a direct operational need” to be closer to a coworker. The airline already requires masks except while eating or on the ramp outside.

• • •

As Alaska’s coronavirus cases banked sharply upward in the past week, more people with symptoms of COVID-19 began showing up at emergency rooms in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Several hospitals in the state this week reported a doubling —- although of very low numbers — of patients going to ERs with coronavirus symptoms, some requiring admittance and others sent home under watch.

At Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, emergency physicians are now seeing six to eight positive-tested people with COVID-19 symptoms every day, with one to three admissions — including some sick enough to need intensive care, according to Dr. Andrew Elsberg, who is employed by Alaska Emergency Medicine Associates and provides care at Providence’s emergency department.

The sickest patients are struggling with very low oxygen saturations, Elsberg said.

“That increase in hospitalizations is real,” he said this week. “We’re seeing more sicker patients. We’re seeing more positive symptomatic patients. We’re sending more people home on the home-monitoring system.”

Health officials generally encourage anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to contact their health care providers first instead of potentially exposing others. But emergency room visits can provide an early barometer of whether the virus is leading to significant illness within a community.

Some hospital officials say they’re seeing red flags.

Alaska’s case numbers are soaring with more than 300 positive tests reported since Saturday. About a third of the state’s active cases in residents came in the past week. As of Tuesday, there were 1,153 people with active infections around the state out of a total of 1,899 cases confirmed since March.

Despite the high daily counts, the state’s numbers still look good on paper. So, state officials say, do hospitals, which right now have enough capacity and also have plans to respond if COVID-19 hospitalizations surge.

Alaska’s hospitalization and death rates remain among the lowest in the nation, in part because the spiking new cases are among people in their 20s and 30s who generally aren’t getting as sick from the virus, state epidemiologists say. They can, however, spread it to more vulnerable people, so officials are trying to find new ways to get younger people to maintain social distance, wear masks and avoid large gatherings.

As of Tuesday, the state reported a total of 92 Alaskans have been hospitalized with the virus since March, putting the state among just a few in the U.S. with such low rates. The number included five new hospitalizations on Monday. Alaska’s death rate is one of the nation’s lowest. Seventeen Alaskans have died with the virus.

The state’s health care capacity remains good for now, hospital officials say, but it will take at least a week to see if patient numbers keep rising, potentially bumping up against limited beds and staff.

The Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association in an opinion piece this week said hospital capacity was not “OK” and pointed to the risk for nursing home outbreaks.

Hospital CEOs on a conference call Monday morning agreed that the state’s health care capacity numbers are a lagging indicator, association president and CEO Jared Kosin said. “By the time our gauges flip red, it would be way too late.”

Nursing homes are now required to do broad baseline testing for all workers and residents, which some were already doing, Kosin said. They are screening workers and limiting visitors so residents can’t see family.

“The worse COVID gets outside of nursing homes, the more restrictive an environment it becomes,” he said. “Don’t rely on hospital capacity to be the answer. This is a far more detrimental effect, especially on our vulnerable populations.”

Alaska definitely has more people hospitalized now — there were 18 COVID-19 patients Monday — but far below national rates, said Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer. Still, hospitals are increasingly busy with summer trauma cases and other non-virus patients filling beds.

“We’re watching closely,” Zink said at a Monday briefing where Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he planned no immediate mandates amid the state’s rising case counts.

Rising emergency room admissions have signaled a surge in hospitalizations in some states. Asked about that, state epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughin said certain aspects of Alaska’s COVID-19 situation set it apart.

The state has experienced few large outbreaks in long-term care facilities, apart from one at the Providence Transitional Care Center in Anchorage that led to the deaths of two residents, McLaughlin said. The state hasn’t seen a large outbreak in a prison setting; there was one cluster among employees at Lemon Creek Correctional Center. Seafood workers, who could have contributed to outbreaks like those in Lower 48 meatpacking plants, were required by state mandate to quarantine.

“Those are a few things that are different here in Alaska so far,” he said.

Some rural hospitals also say they aren’t seeing an uptick in patients.

In Bethel, the emergency room at Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. has not experienced a rise in people presenting with flu-like or COVID-19 symptoms, according to chief of staff Dr. Ellen Hodges.

Ketchikan hospital officials say they also are not seeing more patients in the ER. Most of the recent positive tests in that Southeast Alaska city are travelers without symptoms who got screened when they arrived at the airport, according to PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center spokeswoman Mischa Chernick.

At Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, however, emergency department director Dr. Michael Burton said he is watching the daily case counts with “trepidation” given the state’s rising test positivity rates. Fairbanks is seeing a sudden increase in confirmed cases.

“We kind of went from just a handful of patients a day that we thought had any symptoms consistent with COVID illness to probably double over the course of the last few days throughout the weekend,” Burton said Monday.

Like state health officials, people working in hospitals around the state are pleading with Alaskans to wear face coverings, maintain at least 6 feet from others in public places, and practice solid hygiene to slow the rising positive cases and make sure hospitals can continue to remain open at current levels.

Julie Taylor, the CEO of Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, says she wishes she could find “a more compelling why” to convince Alaskans to practice safeguards like social distancing and avoiding large groups.

Regional has plenty of room right now, Taylor said. But the chain that owns the hospital also owns facilities in hotspots like Texas and Florida where a similar scenario flipped into overwhelmed capacity within a week to 10 days.

Administrators there are warning her to get ready.

“How do you get Alaskans to pay attention when they feel we are the last holdouts?” Taylor said. “Really, what we need to do is learn from those who have gone before us.”

• • •

The Anchorage Health Department on Friday afternoon released a list of establishments — primarily bars — where people “who were infectious with COVID-19 spent extended time.”

The health department is asking that anyone who was in these businesses during the specified days avoid people who are vulnerable to COVID-19, monitor themselves for symptoms and check their temperatures twice daily for two weeks.

The list includes the following establishments and dates:

• Anchorage Moose Lodge #1534, eight case visits, exposure period: June 23 to June 28

• Panhandle Bar in Anchorage, six case visits, exposure period: June 16 to June 24

• JJ’s Lounge in Anchorage, six case visits, exposure period: June 15 to June 18

• The Gaslight Bar, five case visits identified, exposure period June 25 to June 27

• Williwaw Social in Anchorage, three case visits, exposure period: June 20, June 21 and June 25

• Chilkoot Charlie’s in Anchorage, two case visits, exposure period: June 18 to June 25

• Cabin Tavern in Anchorage, two case visits, exposure period: June 24 to June 25

• F Street Station in Anchorage, two case visits, exposure period: June 20 and June 25

• Eddie’s Sports Bar in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 18

• Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 25

• Pioneer Bar in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 20

• Bernie’s Bungalow Lounge in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 25

• Great Alaskan Bush Co. in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 24

• Asia Garden in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 24

• The Blue Line Pub & Cafe in Anchorage, one case visit, exposure period: June 17

• Homestead Sports Lounge in Eagle River, one case visit identified, exposure period: June 26

• Matanuska Brewing Company in Eagle River, two case visits, exposure period: June 26

• Spurs Bar and Grill (formerly Four Corners Lounge) in Palmer, three case visits, exposure period: June 23 to June 27

• The Yukon Bar in Seward, two case visits, exposure period: June 23 to June 25

Symptoms of COVID-19 may include “fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, chest pressure or tightness, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea,” the health department said in its statement.

It’s possible to be infectious with the virus two days before getting sick and 10 days afterward. The department asks that anyone who develops symptoms stay home except to get tested.

The Anchorage Health Department cautioned that the list contains only confirmed places of exposures and the virus is spreading rapidly throughout the city. The department said it’s working on a webpage that contains notices of exposure, though the department doesn’t list informal gatherings.

Amid rising cases linked to multiple establishments, the Municipality of Anchorage and industry groups released a list of suggested guidelines for bars and restaurants on Wednesday that include measures such as limiting admittance to people wearing face coverings, turning down music (to keep people from having to get closer to hear one another) and instituting earlier closing hours.

Nationally, COVID-19 cases continued to climb in June, prompting some states to roll back reopenings and restrict or shut down bars.

“With the current surge in cases and related contacts, our public health tracing capacity is maxed out,” Anchorage Health Department Director Natasha Pineda said in a statement Saturday. “At this time, particularly at locations where physical distancing and use of face coverings are unlikely to occur, the number of contacts is too large and complex for traditional contact tracing.”

Some people who have tested positive for the illness “did not share or remember all of their close contacts or public places they visited,” the health department said.

It can take two days to one week before the Anchorage Health Department can learn where there were possible exposures. They’re asking that everyone in the municipality keep track of their contacts.

On Wednesday, Pineda said the city’s “contact tracing capacity is at its max at the local level.”

Several new cases include people who have dozens of contacts — as opposed to just a few, which was more often the case earlier in the pandemic — as the city tries to hire more people temporarily to work on tracing.

When asked at a media briefing Wednesday about the possibility of reimposing restrictions on bars, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he would continue to watch the state’s COVID-19 numbers to make decisions if needed.

“Everything is on the table to fight a pandemic,” he said.

But, Dunleavy said, there are emotional, economic and health issues that come with each decision made.

“It’s difficult to answer until we really examine these numbers and see where they’re going to go here over the next few days,” Dunleavy said.

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Omar Jackson’s COVID-19 testing swab occurred just a few minutes after waiting in line near the Alaska Airlines baggage claim on Thursday at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

“My boys and I were pretty spooked about it,” Jackson said. “We thought it would be a big Q-tip, like, all the way up to the brain,” he said. “But it went pretty smooth.”

The 28-year-old from Portland, Oregon, had come to Alaska for a summer job as a seafood processor. He’s one of hundreds of new travelers to Alaska who are now having to navigate the state’s updated health mandate addressing interstate and international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the revised mandate, which went into effect on Saturday, out-of-state travelers who test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of boarding a plane to Alaska will be able to avoid the state’s 14-day quarantine requirement. Travelers can also get tested when they land and quarantine until they get a negative result.

Jackson chose to get tested upon arrival. So did Damon Yearly, from Seattle, who was here to pick up his kids so they could spend the summer together in Washington.

Both men said the experience was painless.

“I thought it was going to be much worse,” Yearly said when asked how his airport COVID-19 test had gone.

John MacKinnon, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said during a Wednesday briefing that airline traffic is about 20% of what it would be in a normal season, which has made conducting tests more manageable.

“And we expect as tourism and fishery travel to ramp up, we’ll be in shape, and a well-practiced team able to conduct these tests,” he said.

Still, MacKinnon said, “this is not an easy thing to do,” with 18 flights daily into Anchorage carrying about 1,800 passengers and seven flights daily into Fairbanks carrying about 600 passengers.

He said Alaska Airlines helped by making the now-required travel declarations available on their website and on all flights coming into Alaska.

When asked at the briefing how many positive results the airport tests have yielded so far, Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer, said, “I know of at least one case that got picked up at the airport testing that came out of Ketchikan.”

She said that while news of few positive test results was heartening, it is still important for travelers to Alaska to continue to take social distancing seriously even if their initial tests come back negative.

Jesse Vance, 19, from Fairbanks, was returning home to Alaska after a family trip to Hawaii on Thursday morning. He said this was his first trip out of the state in a while.

“Honestly, it’s really nice they’re offering this,” he said, gesturing to the testing site nearby. “It seems like they’re taking precautions to protect Alaskans.”

Nearby, Kathy Fit from Massachusetts wore a cloth mask and a visor with “Alaska” embroidered on it.

She is staying in Alaska for the summer — she has a house and some family in Healy, she said, and wasn’t nervous at all about the COVID-19 test she was about to receive.

Fit said she had considered getting tested before she left, but she’d heard that in Massachusetts, the current turnaround time for tests was about five business days.

“It didn’t make sense,” she said, knowing that it was unlikely her test result would come back in time for her flight to Alaska.

Besides, “a lot can happen in five days,” she added — she was worried about getting infected during the window between getting tested and landing in Anchorage.

On a rainy afternoon earlier this week, Elaine Lewis, 69, from Oregon, was in good spirits as she waited just outside the baggage area for her daughter, who she was visiting, to pick her up.

“I did the pre-test, so it was quick!” she said with a smile.

But there was a snag: finding a local testing site that was willing to test her without symptoms. She ended up having to drive across state lines to Moscow, Idaho, where a clinic was willing to test her as a travel precaution.

Nearby, Aden Murphy, 32, checked his phone. He was searching online for local food options as he waited for his luggage to appear.

A mechanic from Oregon who recently accepted a job in Alaska, Murphy said that for weeks, he’d been having to push back his flight. The delays came from confusion around what travel was considered essential, and how best to comply as an out-of-state worker.

It wasn’t until new travel restrictions provided an opportunity for him to get tested at the airport that his employer gave the green light, he said.

Since then, Murphy said life has gotten easier.

“It took me two minutes to get tested,” he said, gesturing upstairs to one of the new airport testing locations.

Which is not too bad, he said, considering: “I’ve been trying to get here for two months!”

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For 2 1/2 months, an Anchorage care center that specializes in people just released from the hospital dodged the coronavirus bullet.

Late last month, COVID-19 arrived at the Providence Transitional Care Center with a vengeance. Now one resident has died, more than 40 other residents and caregivers are infected and several residents are hospitalized.

Another resident is expected to die with the virus, Providence officials said Wednesday. Both the fatality and the critically ill resident were described as being in fragile health to the point their families didn’t want extensive life-saving efforts made.

“It’s humbling how transmissable this virus is,” chief medical officer Dr. Michael Bernstein said at a press briefing Wednesday. “Because people were doing excellent practices.”

The only thing the facility could have done differently is weekly testing to check for the virus before it took hold, Bernstein said. Providence didn’t have the COVID-19 testing capacity to do that, and even this week the two types of equipment that conduct rapid tests had manufacturing problems.

The 49-bed facility provides rehabilitation and other longer-term care to people just released from the hospital.

It’s now home to the largest COVID-19 outbreak in Alaska as the state enters unfortunate common ground with the Lower 48, where long-term care facilities that often house medically compromised people in close quarters account for at least a third of novel coronavirus deaths.

State data on Wednesday showed a sudden spike in the number of people hospitalized in Alaska who were either confirmed to have COVID-19 or suspected of having the virus. It also showed that active cases here hit the highest daily levels at 190 since the pandemic first surfaced here in March.

The Providence outbreak is part of the balance between opening up Alaska’s economy and safeguarding people from this highly infectious disease, Bernstein said.

“We knew we would see more cases when we opened up,” he said, adding that the state still has enough health care capacity to take care of the very ill. “We’re living in that balance and it’s hard to titrate. We really, really want to keep the virus out of these long-term care facilities.”

The center barred visitors in March and stopped admitting people after the first case was confirmed in late May, Bernstein said. More stringent screening measures were in place there than in other Providence facilities.

It’s impossible to pinpoint just how the virus entered the center, Bernstein said — either through an employee or a newly admitted resident.

The first confirmed case came on May 29 in a patient who experienced cough and fever, hospital officials say. Hundreds of tests were administered within the next few day including on more than 300 employees. More rounds of tests have followed.

Additional tests are planned for 350 to 375 people who originally tested negative, Bernstein said.

As of Wednesday, 17 Providence Transitional Care Center residents and 26 caregivers had confirmed cases of the virus, along with one worker at adjacent Providence Extended Care, where it’s hoped eight separate cottages will help isolate residents from the disease.

Providence moved patients into one L-shaped wing at the transitional center and has isolated COVID-positive people in one part of it, Bernstein said. Residents are no longer receiving specialized services like physical therapy, though they’re still getting medical care and nursing.

The facility as of Wednesday had moved seven transitional care residents to Providence-owned St. Elias Specialty Hospital to ease staffing challenges and try to start providing rehabilitation and other services, officials have said.

St. Elias is a 60-bed hospital that treats patients with complicated medical conditions — the kind of patients considered vulnerable to COVID-19 infections — that call for longer stays.

One of those people tested negative but has since had “conflicting” test results and is being tested again, Bernstein said.

That person was moved back to the transitional center to avoid exposure to the virus within St. Elias even though it’s not clear whether they actually have the virus, he said. “None of these things are done without a lot of thought. They’re really a byproduct of a pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years.”

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Part of a continuing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

On Nov. 29, 1918, a Friday, Anchorage resident Mary Gold died of pneumonia, another victim of the Spanish influenza. Her death shocked locals. Ben Gold, her husband, was the prominent proprietor of a Fourth Avenue dry goods store. And Mary was one of the more visible volunteers at the hospital. Just that previous Sunday, she “was well and doing all she could to help those afflicted with the influenza,” according to the Anchorage Daily Times. She took ill that night, was admitted to the hospital the next day and then rapidly deteriorated, “despite all that could be done for her by human effort.” The next April, Ben sold the business and abandoned Anchorage for good with their two daughters.

The Spanish influenza, or Spanish flu, pandemic of 1918 to 1919 was confirmed in Alaska by October 1918, later than most of the Lower 48. Mortality rates in Alaska varied wildly from town to town, or village to village, let alone region to region. In some areas of Alaska, such as a large swath of the Seward Peninsula, mortality rates were as high as 90-100 percent. Estimates for Spanish flu deaths in Alaska range from 1,100 to 2,000, though such estimates are quite likely conservative due to poor documentation.

November 1918 was the peak for the Spanish flu in Alaska, a dark conclusion to what was an especially tragic year for the territory. Besides the pandemic, as difficult as that might be to consider, World War I did not conclude until Nov. 11. Alaskans died in this war, including Anchorage’s John “Jack” Henry, the namesake for the first local American Legion post. And on Oct. 25, the passenger liner SS Princess Sophia sank near Juneau. All aboard died, more than 300 crew and passengers, the deadliest maritime accident in Alaska history.

In Anchorage, there were many short- and long-term impacts from the pandemic. One was the delay in burials. First, there could be no public funerals due to the local quarantine enforced through most of November 1918. Second, one of the local undertakers, Helmer Wickberg, himself succumbed to the Spanish flu. Ed Walker, perhaps the first local death, died on Nov. 3 but was not buried until Nov. 17.

Similarly, the Anchorage quarantine order also closed all church services. Not all residents agreed with this action. The Anchorage Christian Science Society paid the Times to reprint a lengthy editorial from the Christian Science Monitor. Said the author, “The church which closes its doors practically proclaims its impotency, and the admission is a terrible one when it is made in the hour of a nation’s need.” A service in memory of all local pandemic victims was held in the Presbyterian church on Dec. 15, 1918.

The quarantine also impacted the November 1918 election. Political rallies and meetings were banned with all other public gatherings. As could be expected, turnout was low, with an estimated “100 qualified voters” kept from the polls just in Anchorage.

Throughout Alaska, police and marshals patrolled city streets, dispersing gatherings. James Wickersham, the once and future Alaska delegate to Congress, was present at one such illegal meeting in Juneau. However, he was relieved after it was shut down. That evening, he learned that the virus had claimed a friend in Ketchikan. Wickersham’s diary entry for the day concludes, “I am afraid from influenza!”

Nationwide and long-term, the Spanish flu also increased professional credibility and recognition for nurses. Without a vaccine or antibiotics, the doctors mattered relatively little to case outcomes. The nurses treated the symptoms and eased the experience for patients.

In Anchorage, doctors downplayed the significance of the Spanish flu into the crisis itself. “Don’t be alarmed over influenza in Anchorage,” said local doctors. “There is none and what seems so is just ordinary, common every-day grippe.” Nurses were, according to the Times, the “people who quietly and unostentatiously served as good Samaritans during the influenza epidemic who are entirely satisfied in knowing that they did all in their power to relieve the afflicted.”

Thus, Mary Gold’s passing was a small tragedy amidst a larger one, for she was one of the few willing and able to assist the sick. Other nurses and volunteers in Anchorage became ill due to their exposure, though Mary is the only one known to have died.

The Spanish flu pandemic did provide something of a base for a better Alaska, or at least an Alaska better prepared for the next public health calamity. In 1919, the first Commissioner of Health was appointed, albeit on a part-time basis and without a salary until 1923. Many communities established boards of health at this time. Some of the resulting restrictions appear familiar, like a Ketchikan regulation that required an empty stool between restaurant patrons. In Fairbanks, postal workers fumigated mail.

In Anchorage, the creation of a local health board in late October 1918 empowered officials to enforce the subsequent “flu siege.” And it set the stage to respond to later crises. Acting not as mayor but as chairman of the Anchorage Board of Health, Oscar Gill decisively instituted a strict quarantine on Jan. 13, 1936, that curtailed the deaths of Anchorage children during a scarlet fever outbreak. Restrictions on public gatherings would also be implemented in the local diphtheria and polio outbreaks of 1946 and 1954 respectively.

Key sources:

Anchorage Daily Times reporting, 1918 to 1919.

Gill, Oscar S. “Quarantine Notice.” Anchorage Daily Times, January 13, 1936, 3.

Lautaret, Ronald L. “Alaska’s Greatest Disaster.” In The Alaska Journal 1986: History and Arts of the North, Vol. 16, edited by Terrence Cole, 238-243. Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1986.

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