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The daily count of COVID-19 cases in Alaska soared to a record 745 new cases on Saturday as the state reported one new death and consistently high virus hospitalizations.
An Anchorage man in his 60s was the 98th Alaskan to die with COVID-19, the State Department of Health and Human Services said on Saturday. A non-Alaskan resident with the virus also died, the state said this week.
The record daily case total comes after a week in which the state reported several of its highest case counts and hospitalizations reached their highest level since the pandemic began in March. For weeks, hospital officials and public health experts have voiced serious concerns about the capacity of healthcare in Alaska and the state’s ability to handle a sudden influx of critically ill patients.
State data on Saturday showed 113 people with COVID-19 were hospitalized statewide, while 19 other hospital patients were suspected of having the disease. There were a total of 38 adult intensive care unit beds available statewide on Saturday.
Several hospitals and nursing homes have staff in quarantine as the virus spreads in communities across the state. At the same time, more and more people are ending up in the state hospital with symptoms of COVID-19. As of Saturday, more than a tenth of all those hospitalized in Alaska had the disease.
Officials fear the rapid rise in cases could lead to a wave of patients in hospitals who cannot treat them effectively, as hospitals strive to build capacity as much as possible.
Dr Robert Onders, administrator of Alaska Native Medical Center, said the hospital last week had enough staff for 18 beds – all full. Alaska Native Medical Center has opened another care site in the past two weeks and Onders has said he is ready to open an additional wing for more COVID-19 patients if needed.
The 5,621 cases of the virus identified in the first two weeks of November among residents of Alaska represent nearly 29% of all resident cases since the start of the pandemic. In addition to the major population centers in the state, western Alaska has been particularly affected. Friday and Saturday, the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp. reported a total of 153 new cases amid ongoing transmission in several communities in the largely roadless and remote Yukon Delta, home to about 23,000 people.
While the state’s per capita death rate has remained relatively low since March, at least 19 U.S. states and territories – including Oregon, Washington, California, and Hawaii – have had lower death rates over the years. past seven days, national data showed on Saturday.
Resources across the state, including healthcare workers and contact tracers, are under increasing strain as cases mount, health officials say. In Anchorage, the majority of new cases are treated within a day by contact tracers. But only close contacts identified as “at higher risk” are now receiving calls, according to Dr Janet Johnston, an epidemiologist in the Anchorage Department of Health.
City health officials said it was likely that further restrictions would be needed to bring the pandemic under control. City residents accounted for 489 of the new cases reported on Saturday.
“I would say that ideally we want to see what the effect of recent changes in emergency controls has been,” Johnston said on Friday. A reinforced mask mandate and new limits on collection sizes went into effect in Anchorage on Monday.
“My feeling is that what they are doing at this point is reduce the rate of increase, and that if we are really going to flatten the curve and reduce the cases, we will need more extreme measures,” she said. declared.
Alaska’s leaders continue to plead with the public to take pandemic precautions seriously. They specifically advise wearing masks, avoiding gatherings, washing your hands frequently, and staying at least 6 feet from non-household members. Many of the state’s more recent cases have been linked to households and small meetings, according to health officials.
Of the 736 resident cases reported by the state on Saturday, 433 were in Anchorage, 44 in Eagle River and 12 in Chugiak; 63 in Fairbanks; 31 in Wasilla; 19 in Bethel; 15 in Juneau; 14 in Soldotna; 13 at the North Pole; 11 in Ketchikan; nine to Homer; nine at Delta Junction; seven in Kenai; five to Palmer; five in Utqiagvik; two at Fritz Creek; two to Nikiski; two in Seward; two in pounds sterling; one at Kodiak; one in Cordoba; one in Nome; one in Kotzebue; one in Petersburg; one in Metlakatla; one in Sitka; and two in unidentified areas of the state.
Among communities of less than 1,000 people who are not named to protect privacy, there have been six cases of residents in the Bethel census area; five in the south of the Kenai Peninsula; four in the borough of Fairbanks North Star; three in the Valdez-Cordova census area; two in the north of the Kenai Peninsula; two in the Yukon-Koyukuk census region; two in the Yakutat plus Hoonah-Angoon region; one in the Denali borough; one in the southeast Fairbanks census area; one in the Ketchikan Gateway borough; one in Bristol Bay plus the boroughs of Lake and Peninsula; and one in the Kusilvak census area.
The state also reported nine non-resident cases in unidentified areas of the state.
Of the new cases, it is not stated how many patients showed symptoms of the virus when they tested positive. While people can be tested more than once, each case reported by the state’s health department represents only one person.
The state’s testing positivity on Saturday was 8.9% on a seven-day moving average. A positivity rate above 5% may indicate high community transmission and not enough testing, health officials say.
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