After leading the nation in vaccination rates earlier this year, Alaska has slipped to the bottom third among the 50 states.
Alaska’s rate has not moved up much in the past couple of weeks, despite an increasing number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations statewide since mid-July — numbers that have not been this high since last winter in some communities.
The higher case count — averaging almost 300 a day in the past couple of weeks and approaching 400 on a few days — comes as students are returning to school, with administrators eager for anything closer to normal operations after last year’s pandemic-disrupted education calendar.
“The best thing we can do as adults is get vaccinated,” Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer, said of the return to classrooms. “We have an eight-fold reduction in getting COVID if you’re vaccinated, and a 25-fold reduction in
hospitalizations and deaths if you’re vaccinated,” she told Anchorage TV station KTUU.
As of Tuesday, 58.6% of Alaskans eligible for the vaccines (12 and older) had gotten at least their first shot, according to the state’s COVID-19 online dashboard. That isn’t much higher than the 57% rate reported on July 21.
Just under 53% of eligible Alaskans were fully
vaccinated as of Tuesday’s report.
The national rate for at least one dose was 69% as of Tuesday, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vermont was the most vaccinated state, with Mississippi and Alabama the least fully vaccinated states.
Wrangell was at 62% with at least one vaccine dose in people’s arms, according to the state health department — the same as it has been the past few weeks.
In the first seven months of the year, 94% of the state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations and 97% of deaths have been among Alaskans who are unvaccinated, health officials have reported.
“We’ve had to think about epidemics and infectious disease in ways you never had to,” Zink told a meeting of the Alaska Conference of Mayors last week in Fairbanks, addressing the group by a video link.
In Southeast, Metlakatla went into lockdown Monday evening after seven new cases were reported in the community of about 1,600 residents.
“We are in lockdown and urge the general public to stay home for 72 hours or until the contact tracing is complete and the cases are contained,” said a notice from the Metlakatla Indian Community.
As of Monday evening, Ketchikan reported 79 active COVID cases in the community, almost 10% of the 818 cases it has tallied since the count started in spring 2020.
Half of the cases in Ketchikan are due to close contact with an infected individual, according to the community’s COVID dashboard.
In Wrangell, borough officials reported Monday the community’s 12th COVID-positive case since mid-July. It followed four cases reported last Friday. Of those five, two of the individuals had recently traveled and three were “close contacts of a previously identified case,” the borough said.
Statewide, officials reported more than 1,100 new cases from Friday through Monday, with 114 people hospitalized in Alaska with COVID-19 as of Tuesday. The hospitalization numbers are the highest since December.
The death count in Alaska was at 392 residents as of Tuesday.
While cases are on the upswing around the state, Sitka, which at its worst last month had more than 250 active COVID infections in the community, was down to 80 active cases as of Monday, with its daily count of new cases less than half of the peak last month.
Juneau was at 76 active cases Monday, municipal officials reported. “Three of today’s resident cases are part of a cluster associated with an out-of-town youth sports event. The cluster is at 10 active cases,” officials reported Monday. “All individuals in the cluster are isolating and close contacts are quarantining.”
The rash of new cases has hit even the hospital in Juneau, with eight health care workers at Bartlett Regional Hospital testing positive for COVID-19 in July, according to Charlee Gribbon, the facility’s infection preventionist.
The hospital has a 90% vaccination rate, Gribbon told public radio station KTOO. However, the Delta variant is so much more infectious, and vaccinated and unvaccinated people can get it as they mix in the community, she said.
In the past week, more than one in 15 of the COVID tests administered in Alaska came back positive, state officials said, quadruple the rate from June.
Reader Comments(0)