Anchorage officials are considering new coronavirus restrictions amid a sharp increase in cases within the municipality that could overwhelm hospital intensive care units twice as much as expected.
Anchorage hit a record this week for most new cases in a single week, with 231 new cases total, including nearly twice as many nonresident cases reported the previous week. The state’s daily count continued to grow, with 49 cases reported Friday involving 39 Alaskans and 10 non-residents, according to dashboard COVID-19 from the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services.
City officials and epidemiologists issued dire-sounding warnings during a briefing on Friday.
“It feels like we’re climbing a very steep cliff,” said Christy Lawton, manager of the public health division in Anchorage, about the city’s healthcare capacity. “And we are approaching a point that we could really turn over.”
Officials at the briefing urged people in Anchorage to take the virus seriously and take steps to stop its spread.
Earlier last month, the city had 20 weeks before its intensive care unit capacity was “threatened or overwhelmed,” said Tom Hennessy, an infectious disease epidemiologist and doctor at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Amid new cases and an increase in the transmission rate within the city, that projected time period has now been cut in half according to the model done on July 12, Hennessy said during the briefing.
The city could now run out of intensive care unit beds by September 22, according to new projections, Hennessy said.
Transmission is increasing, as is the number of contacts people have. In March and April, an average person may have been in contact with five or six people while infectious with COVID-19, compared to now when people have more than 30 contacts, he said.
“In addition to more cases and more hospitalizations, the epidemic is accelerating,” said Hennessy. “That means we have to take stronger measures, and the longer we wait, the stronger the action will be and the narrower that window will be.” So this is very worrying. “
The projections for health care capacity are conservative in some respects as they only represent Anchorage residents and Anchorage bed capacity, Hennessy said. But people from other parts of the state can be referred to Anchorage hospitals and ICU beds.
“And that will even shorten the time we have to preserve our health care capacity,” said Hennessy.
But Dr. Bruce Chandler, the city’s disease prevention and control medical officer, said Friday that while the average age of people with the disease fell in the past month, “not all young adults who are getting COVID are escaping. ” unscathed.”
Of the 16 people with COVID-19 who have been hospitalized, five are under the age of 40 and three are under the age of 30, Chandler said.
Amid the rapid increase in cases and the current threat to the municipality’s health care capacity, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said he was seriously considering implementing new restrictions. He said he is currently monitoring what has worked elsewhere, and is working with city leaders on a plan.
Sometime next week, after those discussions and analyzes, he said he hopes the city will have “some more precise policy prescriptions and potentially orders.”
“The decisions we make will not always be popular decisions, but the judgment we exercise at this time is the judgment that will protect people’s lives,” said Berkowitz. “I’d rather do something and overreact than not do something and overreact.”
Of the 39 new resident cases reported by the state on Friday, 17 involve people living in Anchorage, plus one in Chugiak and three in Eagle River. There were five new cases among residents of the Kenai Peninsula, including two in Seward and one in Kenai, Soldotna, and a smaller, unnamed community in the northern part of the peninsula. Further north, four Wasilla residents and a Meadow Lakes resident also tested positive for COVID-19 recently.
Inside, there were two new cases of confirmed residents in Fairbanks, plus one in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area.
In Southeast Alaska, two new cases were identified among Sitka residents. Additionally, Juneau officials reported eight new cases in an outbreak involving a resident who received a positive COVID-19 test result on July 11, and all are associated with Alaska Glacier Seafoods, according to local officials.
The resident, whose case apparently was due to the spread of the community, began experiencing symptoms on July 4, began quarantining and was examined on July 6. On July 8, Alaska Glacier Seafoods began quarantining potential close contacts of the resident, authorities say. Three days later, several employees on the same team as the first person began to show symptoms, including body aches and fever. Of the 17 employees evaluated on July 12, eight, all with symptoms, had positive results.
The remaining 113 employees of the fish products company were evaluated on Wednesday with results still pending, authorities say. Two show symptoms and have been isolating. The eight employees who tested positive, including four residents and four who are not from Alaska, are experiencing minor illnesses and are in isolation with their close quarantined contacts.
State data updated on Friday reflected three new cases among Juneau residents and three among nonresidents, and Juneau officials attributed the discrepancies in state and local numbers to “delays in data entry.” Local public health officials are conducting contact investigations and will notify and quarantine any additional people as needed, but as of Friday they had identified very few close contacts within the community, according to the statement.
The other new nonresident cases reported on Friday included one in Kenai, three in Valdez, two in Sitka and one labeled unknown.
So far, in Alaska, 2,081 Alaska residents and non-residents have tested positive for the virus, with nearly half, 1,271, of those cases currently considered to be active by the state. There were two new hospitalizations reported on Friday, and there were no new deaths. Seventeen Alaska residents with the virus have died since the start of the pandemic.
It was not immediately clear how many of the new cases reported by the state involved people experiencing symptoms of COVID-19.
On Friday, the Anchorage Health Department added F Street Station to its list of exposure locations for COVID-19, with July 10 as the exposure period. The department adds certain locations to the list if they cannot contact everyone who may have been exposed there, or if the department cannot track contacts “in a timely manner.”
“COVID-19 exposures can occur even when a location follows all recommended guidelines,” the department said in a statement.
The owner of F Street Station declined to comment on the notice.
Although most of the locations named on the site so far have been restaurants and bars, health officials have said that these are not the only places where the virus has been transmitted.
“We are seeing COVID appear in virtually every type of community setting you can think of,” said Lawton, manager of the Anchorage public health division. “It is an incredibly dangerous time.”
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