It’s summer in Juneau! It’s clear that independent travel has resumed given the number of maps in hands that you see downtown lately. The return of large cruise ships seems imminent. The 2021 Cruise Ship Calendar has been posted and we expect to see the first large ship in town on July 23. We’ve already started to see some smaller vessels and early indications are the smaller operations are in for a very good season. We expect all of the large ships to arrive with vaccination rates far higher than our local rate based on the CDC requirements and our own port agreements with each individual cruise line.
On the COVID-19 front, we continue to be one of the most vaccinated communities in Alaska; however, our vaccination rate has slowed significantly in recent weeks. The local Chamber has created the Healthy Juneau Initiative to incentivize people to get vaccinated with gift cards and prize drawings. If there are people in your life who haven’t opted to get vaccinated yet, please help them find some good information sources, like juneau.org/vaccine or their local doctor. Need a good vaccine stat to share? Per the Alaska Department of Health & Social Services, since January 1 of this year, 97 percent of all COVID-19 hospitalizations in Alaska have been among people who were unvaccinated.