As COVID-19 emerges across the country, Alaska is seeing a continuous wave of new cases.
Between Alaska residents and non-residents, the state on Thursday reported a new daily high of 50 new cases of the virus, most of which were concentrated in southern central Alaska.
For much of May, Alaska had few new cases of the virus, which has been linked to more than 100,000 deaths across the country. The state then lifted almost all of its pandemic restrictions on business and meetings on May 22. In late May and through June, COVID-19 cases quickly re-emerged across the state.
There were no new deaths or hospitalizations of people confirmed to have the virus, according to the state’s COVID-19 data panel. A total of 14 Alaska residents died from the virus, including four who were out of state at the time.
Anchorage Township saw the largest influx of new cases reported Thursday, with 13 more cases among Anchorage residents, one involving an Eagle River resident, one involving a Chugiak resident, and one involving a visitor to Anchorage. Out of state. Earlier this week, the municipality implemented the mandatory use of masks in most interior public spaces in response to the continued increase in cases.
On Wednesday, Anchorage health officials said the city had reached full capacity to track contacts. New cases in the municipality involve several people who had contact with dozens of people, whereas before in the pandemic, the cases typically involved people with only a few close contacts.
“In this past week, we have many cases associated with locations where there are more than 100 people they may have interacted with, and we cannot trace or contact any of them,” said Natasha Pineda, director of the Anchorage Department of Health. said.
On Thursday, the Matanuska-Susitna district saw an increase in cases among residents there, with nine people from Wasilla testing positive, as well as four people from Palmer and one from Big Lake.
And in Seward, new cases of the disease continued to rise Thursday amid an outbreak there, with the state reporting three new cases involving residents and three among visitors. Before the weekend of July 4, the city instituted several protective measures, including the mandatory use of face covers in interior public spaces and capacity limits for local businesses.
The rest of the new COVID-19 cases among Alaska residents dot the state, with one case each among residents of Fairbanks, the North Pole, a smaller community in the northern Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak, and Sitka. . Two Tok residents also tested positive for the virus.
Out-of-state fishing industry workers were involved in two new cases in Dillingham, one in Unalaska and one in the Bristol Bay and Lake & Peninsula districts, they reported Thursday.
As of Monday, nine fish product workers at a plant in Naknek in the Bristol Bay district tested positive for COVID-19 during the routine exam, said Mary Swain, executive director of the Camai Community Health Center. None of the workers had symptoms and had been quarantined, he said. Swain said he expected more workers who tested positive to go to Anchorage to finish isolating there.
There were also nonresident cases reported among people in Haines, Kodiak and Petersburg on Thursday.
Overall, there are 626 active cases of the virus among Alaska residents and visitors, according to state health department data updated Thursday. Since the start of the pandemic, 1,017 Alaska residents and 209 people from other states have tested positive for COVID-19.
Nearly 40% of the 1,017 cases of Alaska residents have occurred in people in their 20s and 30s, state data showed Thursday.
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