As evidenced by many red-flag indicators, Alaska’s coronavirus case is at an all-time high.
Now government and local officials, including Mike Dunlevy, say they are closely monitoring to see what COVID-19 does next, especially when it comes to getting sick when people need to be hospitalized.
On Monday, 194 new resident cases were reported in Alaska, setting a new record every day. The last time the state saw that there were so many cases in a single day in late July, Spike blamed partly blame on the delayed report. On Monday, for the 12th day in a row, the tall height of the new daily case has crossed 100 – the longest since the onset of the epidemic.
But the summer cases were settled in July, said Janet Johnston, an epidemiologist at the Anchorage Health Department, in an interview Monday.
That’s not what happened now.
“Last week, it felt like the way we were going in July, and the curves were very parallel,” Johnston said. “But now we continue to move forward. And it seems that a lot of the problem is that people have relaxed their vigilance about things like wearing masks and keeping distance when they are going inside. “
Fifteen new cases were reported Monday in the North Pole, more than 200 confirmed cases since March in the southeast of Ferbx, where the city mayor sat at home on the top floor of his house until noon.
Mayor Mike Welsh said his wife tested positive for coronavirus on Friday. Loneliness on the floor below her.
Welsh said he had just asked the state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Picking up the phone with Zinc, who is “sending a team here tomorrow” to deal with the rapidly growing cases in his region. Its very worrying thing at the moment: securing the North Pole’s main polling station before Tuesday’s local elections was deep deep-clear.
“I think we’re all just stumbling over this,” he said.
Cases are growing the fastest in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Northwest Alaska, but the community has spread across the state, officials say.
In Anchorage, the consistently high case count has delayed the resumption of schools for individual education and is due to longer capacity restrictions in bars and restaurants. Across the state, increasing cases have led to school closures and lockdowns in villages.
State officials have warned that this week, Alaska has hit an all-time hit high for the 14-day COVID-19 case rate, with more than 16 cases per 100,000 as of Monday, state officials have warned. It translates into “many fixed cases and frequent, wide community broadcasts with different spreads.”
The state’s test positivity rate also passed 4% for the first time until Monday after the outbreak began in March. Public health officials have said that if that number goes above %% it indicates a high community transition and not enough testing.
The state’s chief medical officer, Dr. “We are concerned that there are currently too many viruses in the state,” Ann Zink said in an interview last week. “This is not the place I want to enter in autumn and winter, which is totally true.”
Positivity rate
In Anchorage last week, municipal officials described regular clusters of cases of assisted living centers where some of the state’s most vulnerable employees could be infected who carry the virus outside of work. This week, Johnston stressed that he is changing the behavior of the community – and the changing seasons – not the big spread that is driving the spread.
He said, “What is frequently mentioned (in contact tracer reports) are activities with family and friends.
“The days are getting shorter, it’s getting cooler, and there’s more mixing going on inside,” he added. “And that’s what I think is the big driver.”
Local healthcare providers say Fairbanks has the highest case rate in the state at 25.5 per 100,000 and the highest test positivity is 10%.
Fairbanks School closed in mid-September in a group of 40 high-essential students for individual study after five people from Led Elementary tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks. Yumi Mull Clough, spokesperson for Fairbank North Star Borough School District.
The state’s model dales, which briefly forecast declining case counts, now predicts an increase in the level of infection we’ve seen to date.
But there are other indicators that show how we get sick with this virus, Alaska adapts to many other places, because there are more small ones here. Officials say it is people in their 20s and 30s who are pushing for a new case. In general, they weather the virus with less complications than older people or people with underlying medical conditions.
And yet, Alaska’s mortality rate is still the lowest in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. The number of people sick enough to be hospitalized with COVID-19 has not increased for more than a week and has actually decreased slightly in recent days.
As of Monday, 37 Covid-19 patients were hospitalized across the state, 11 of them in ICU beds at Anchorage where the state’s weakest patients end up, according to figures from the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association.
In general, hospital admissions for coronavirus patients remain constant for the last 30 to 60 days, according to Jared Cossin, president and CEO of the association.
Health industry administrators are concerned this summer, when a similarly rising case count has led to fears of an emergency in state hospitals as COVID-19 patients limited ICU space.
That never happened, Cosine said. But for a person who contracts the virus it can take a week or two for the hospital care requirement to be met, so it’s hard to say what the current spike in cases will bring.
“Community spread is always relevant,” he said. “We hold on and we’re able to manage what’s intact and what’s coming … but staying behind is indicative and no one knows what tomorrow will bring.”
On Monday afternoon, a spokesman for Dunlawi emailed a statement in response to questions from the Anchorage Daily News about whether there would be a change in the current order in the growing case count, which would include testing or quarantine for most passengers and requiring masks in state buildings but not statewide. The governor said he generally wants communities to direct their own COVID-19 policies.
The statement said that now Dunlavi and state health officials are “closely monitoring the number of cases and are in daily contact with hospital officials about Alaska’s hospital capacity.” “While the number of positive cases is increasing, that was expected by the governor and Alaska public health experts. It is also important to know that for every 100 hospital beds captured, only 2 to 4 beds are used by a patient of Kovid-19. ”
The governor is monitoring the calculations and evaluating the existing protocols and will make changes to the state’s “approach to operating Covid-19 if necessary,” the statement said.
Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said last week that he wanted to move forward with the implementation of epidemic precautions and urged businesses to “do the right thing” to avoid further sanctions. Berkowitz said he was personally “looking at options” to bring the case to the school’s permission but wanted to make sure they were effective and had community acceptance.
“Wear a blasphemous mask if I quote Chris Valce Lace,” Berkowitz said.
Municipal health officials also expressed concern last week that city hospitals could get out of ICU beds later this month or early November if the ongoing case translates into more seriously ill people.
Cases are on the rise in Europe and other U.S. states, especially in the Midwest, Zinc said. The same thing happens in other places in Alaska.
The second number that is rising is the r0 or “r-nnot” rate, which indicates how contagious COVID-19 is now, according to Tom Hansey, an infectious disease pathologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage and affiliated faculty member. Those risks of infection are heightened by the increased risk as those in Alaska who spent long summer days outside are pushed inside as the flu season puts more pressure on clinics and hospitals.
“While we’ve been on standoff for about two months now, we’ll be transmitting a higher risk from both the increased number of active cases and the risk of transmission from those cases to others,” Hansey said. Said in an interview last week. “And that’s a very worrying setting, given everything else we’ve talked about – people moving around the house, cold and flu season, potentially expanding that effect.” They are all related and point to a fall outbreak that could be very dangerous for Alaska. “
Johnston said reducing the number of cases in the anchorage will continue to be more challenging due to the cold weather and the arrival of shorter days, making it harder for society outside, and demanding more creativity.
He said the best thing people can do is wear a mask and keep a distance of six feet whenever someone is around, when they are not in a nearby house. “We have come at this time, and we have to find ways to protect ourselves and keep our spirits safe.”
Journalists Morgan Krakow and Emily Gudicont contributed to this story.
