Leaders of the Alaska House of Representatives canceled a regular floor session on Wednesday due to concerns about COVID-19.
House Speaker Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, said in a statement that a “large portion” of representatives were exposed to COVID-19 over the prior 24 hours. She said contact tracing is ongoing and the decision to cancel the meeting was made “in an abundance of caution.”
A spokesperson for the House majority caucus said that roughly half of the House members were close contacts of a positive case.
As of Wednesday morning, the Legislature’s testing contractor was still determining who had to quarantine, based on their vaccination status, according to the spokesperson.
The House instead held a technical session Wednesday without normal legislative business.
Andrew Kitchenman is the state government and politics reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO in Juneau. Reach him at akitchenman@alaskapublic.org.
