COVID-19

Kent Tompkins, the owner of J & B Construction in Sterling, was arrested last week by the FBI. According to an indictment, Tompkins lied on his applications for more than $300,000 in pandemic relief loans for small business.

A letter from the U.S Department of Education says the state disproportionately reduced funding to three Alaska school districts when it received federal COVID-19 relief funds. That includes $5 million to KPBSD, which the feds say the state must make a plan to remedy.

Kenai Public Health is holding an after-hours clinic Friday for COVID-19 and flu vaccines.

KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland said due to the widespread availability of COVID vaccines, advances in treatment options for COVID and a downtrend in severe cases of the illness, the district is continuing to move away from enforcing masking and some other COVID-19 mitigation measures.

Kenai Public Health Nurse Tami Marsters says reported numbers don’t even begin to capture the COVID situation in the borough, because these days, so much COVID is detected through at-home tests, which are not reported to the state or included in published counts

According to the CDC, there have been more than 250 new reported cases in the Kenai Peninsula Borough over the last week — a 22% increase over the last seven days.

The department reports 500 more deaths than expected in 2020, as well as over 1,400 more than expected in 2021. Almost half of those total deaths were caused by COVID-19.

A lot has changed since then. But today, the peninsula is still seeing cases and reeling from the fallout of the pandemic.

Starting Friday, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District will no longer conduct contact tracing or implement universal masking on a school-by-school basis.

Update: This story was updated Tuesday, Feb. 8 with an updated list of KN95 pick-up locations.The Kenai Public Health Center has packages of KN95 masks in…