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The chairman of the foundation that owns Fairbanks Memorial Hospital has said his mission is to convince Governor Mike Dunleavy to enact a statewide face mask mandate.
Jeff Cook, president of the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation, said Alaska was only among a dozen states that didn’t have one. He said the virus was under control in places that demanded public health practices such as face masks.
Cook said a Bethel woman died this week in Fairbanks, far from home, of COVID-19 after hospitals in Bethel and then south-central Alaska were at full capacity and could not l ‘accept.
In Seattle, hospitals are refusing Alaskan COVID-19 patients, he said.
“Today is the time for the governor to show compassionate and wise leadership,” Cook said in a message to Dunleavy that went to the substitutes.
Dunleavy recommended face masks, but was pictured in a group without a mask and called on city leaders to decide whether requiring masks is the right thing for their communities.
Many local leaders rejected this. Lawyers in second-class boroughs such as the Fairbanks North Star neighborhood, which was designed to have limited powers, say a mask mandate is beyond the scope of authority of local leaders.
“(Dunleavy) wastes everyone’s time and money arguing with boroughs and cities over who has what power,” Cook wrote in an email shared with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
“He has the power and should exercise it. Vaccines are several months away to provide significant relief. We need to take action now to reduce the positivity rate for COVID-19. If we don’t, we will exceed our capacity to manage COVID-19 and other patients in Alaska, ”Cook said.
His comments add to the continued pressure from people in the health care industry across the state calling for bold action to slow the transmission of the virus.
The beds in the intensive care units are filling up. According to an online virus data center, 98 of Alaska’s 125 intensive care beds were filled with viruses and other patients on Friday.
Cook is concerned about the stability of the health care system in the weeks and months to come.
“I’m tired of going to local stores where there are signs on the door asking or requiring masks to protect employees, but employees are not masked,” he wrote in an email to administrators and hospital executives.
He told them about his communications with Dunleavy staff, including Jim Sackett, director of the governor’s office in Fairbanks, and Ben Stevens, chief of staff.
“Our grandson here in Fairbanks has tested positive for COVID-19 and is recovering,” Cook said in the email to his colleagues.
“The mother-in-law of one of our daughters is in hospital in Mesa, Arizona, and has severe COVID-19,” he said.
Contact writer Amanda Bohman at 459-7545. Follow her on Twitter: @FDNMborough.
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