State health officials have added daily symptom screenings for all seafood processor workers to the list of protocols to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the commercial salmon season now underway all over Alaska.
Daily logs of screening for each worker are to be maintained and made available to the Alaska Division of Public Health upon request.
The new guidelines dictate that testing individuals with any symptoms of the novel coronavirus employ a molecular diagnostic test that detects SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid (the Abbott ID NOW) test, as an antibody test is not satisfactory for diagnosing acute infection.
Anyone testing positive for COVID-19 must be placed into isolation and these individuals may only be released from isolation by public health officials.
All workers who have been identified by public health staff as close contacts to the COVID-19 case must remain in quarantine for 14 days. The exception to that would be if the facility is unable to remain open/operational without the quarantined staff. In that case, baseline testing and retesting every three days is required until there are no more new cases detected in that entire Tier 1 group.
Although not required, testing workers periodically, such as every four weeks, throughout the season is recommended to detect asymptomatic cases and prevent spread of the virus throughout the facility/vessel and local community. Frequency of testing should take into account the probability of importation of the virus into the facility and local testing capacity.
That routine testing is to be based on several factors, including the degree to which workers mix, intentionally or unintentionally, with the local community, especially if the virus is already circulating in that community.
A log of all testing is to be maintained.
If an employer requires additional criteria to be met before the individual returns to work, that is doe at the employer’s discretion.
Repeat testing of those already released from isolation is not recommended, as the results of a molecular detection test can cause alarm, even though challenging to interpret, according to the new state guidelines.
