The municipal health department charged with investigating COVID-19 in Anchorage is dealing with a cluster of infections among its own employees.

The Anchorage Health Department on Friday announced six workers had tested positive as other cases were reported throughout the city in multiple departments.

The state on Friday also announced the temporary closure of the Atwood Building, which houses state agencies, due to a positive COVID-19 test in a worker there.

The building will be closed until Monday to allow for cleaning, according to a statement from a spokesman for Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The worker who tested positive did not have symptoms of the virus and was found through contact tracing. A Division of Oil and Gas employee tested positive for the virus last week but a general email didn’t go out to employees outside their close coworkers until this week.

Among the municipal health workers who tested positive, state contact tracers determined they did not come in close contact with other staff or clients, according to department director Natasha Pineda.

Clients were notified of the positive cases out of an abundance of caution, Pineda said. The health workers used personal protection, and the department requires face coverings and screens visitors and workers prior to entry, she said. The department has also increased the daytime cleaning schedule.

Still, Pineda said, the health department will likely have more cases “as COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in Anchorage” and the risk of infection continues to rise.

The department is at the center of the municipal COVID-19 response. Health department employees conduct contact tracing, study the ways the virus is spreading within the community, and help develop policies in response.

The Assembly learned in a July 12 report that the department was investigating itself. The report described cases under investigation “associated with a variety of community businesses, agencies, and organizations, for example, childcare centers, residential treatment facilities, a fitness center, a retail grocery store, sports teams, a place of worship, and our own department.”

Anchorage is at the epicenter of the state’s soaring number of resident COVID-19 cases with 672 people considered actively infected as of Thursday out of 1,098 confirmed in the municipality since the pandemic began in March. Anchorage residents generally account for the majority of new cases reported in recent weeks as the state sets new records for daily counts. Anchorage hit its own record with 65 cases Sunday.

Among the duties of health officials: tracking down all the people an infected person may have come into close contact with while they were contagious. Municipal health officials began warning several weeks ago that their contact tracing capacity was overwhelmed by the spike in new cases.

Berkowitz on Thursday also announced that Pineda was leaving the director position and appointed Heather Harris as the new director. A press release did not elaborate on the reason for the transition, but Berkowitz said Pineda “stayed on long past the time she agreed to serve” and described her as reenergizing and reorganizing the department through the November 2018 earthquake and the ongoing pandemic.

Harris starts on Aug. 24, according to the mayor’s release.

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