Alaska reported 92 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday as active cases among residents around the same level the previous day.
Between Thursday and Saturday, officials reported the deaths of two Alaskans with COVID-19: One was a resident of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta whose death was reported by the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. on Thursday, and the other was a North Pole in his 80s whose death was announced Friday.
To date, 31 Alaskans have died with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic.
A total of 4,677 Alaska residents and 817 non-residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since March.
There were 41 people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 and five others pending test results by Saturday, state data showed. Alaska has 153 beds for intensive care units, which are used for the state’s sickest patients, and state data showed that 85 were in statewide use by the weekend.
While hospitalizations for COVID-19 have not overwhelmed the state’s health care capacity, they are still going up as dead from the disease, the state’s health department said this week.
The state also sees a “rapid increase” in new cases of COVID-19 among Alaska residents, the department said in a summary report on cases that occurred between Aug. 9 and 15.
New cases reported by the state on Saturday included 41 cases in Anchorage (including two nonresidents) and three in Eagle River.
The state reported another 48 cases among residents elsewhere in Alaska: 10 in Wasilla, one in Big Lake, two in Palmer, five in Kenai, three in Soldotna, one in Homer, 11 in Fairbanks, one in North Pole, one in Utqiagvik , one in Kotzebue, two in Juneau, two in Ketchikan, one in Wrangell and one in Bethel. Among smaller communities in the state, there were two resident cases in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area and four in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area.
From the newly reported cases, it was not clear how many diseases show symptoms of the virus when tested positive.
The state positive testing rate reported Saturday was 1.86% over a seven-day rolling average.
