Alaska's brush with COVID-19: Until now, the US state of Alaska has been unscathed by the coronavirus crisis. But with the state's lucrative fishing season about to start, hundreds of fishing boat crews from around the country have descended on Alaskan villages, bringing the disease with them. The first coronavirus case was identified recently in the town of Cordova, when a Seattle-based worker tested positive. The pandemic puts Alaskan officials in a bind: they want to protect their residents, but they don't want to cripple the fishing industry, which generates $5 billion a year and accounts for 8 percent of statewide employment. But continuing with business as usual poses huge risks for workers, many of whom work in crowded fish processing plants – similar to the assembly line in meat-processing centers that have proven to be vectors of disease around the world. Local officials are weighing the dilemma at a time when Alaska has already taken a financial hit because of plummeting prices for oil, its main economic engine, as well as disruption to tourism, another big local industry.