While Wrangell did not report a single COVID-19 infection between Sept. 10 and 21, the state tracking website reported almost 8,000 new cases over that period.
Alaska’s numbers are so bad lately that the state’s average rate of daily new infections over the past week is more almost triple the national average — and higher than any other state — as reported on The New York Times COVID-19 tracking page.
Alaska is facing “one of the sharpest surges” in the country, the state epidemiologist said Sept. 16, adding that it’s not clear when the situation might stabilize.
Daily case counts haven’t been this high since November-December 2020.
“A lot of it’s going to depend on vaccination coverage rates” and measures such as masking, distancing and avoiding crowds, Dr. Joe McLaughlin told reporters.
Alaska health officials said hospitals are stressed to their staffing and capacity limits. The state health department reported about 20% of all patients hospitalized in Alaska have COVID-19. More than 80% of hospitalized COVID patients in late August were unvaccinated.
On average from Sept. 9-16, about one in 10 COVID-19 tests administered in Alaska came back positive.
As of Tuesday, 448 Alaska residents had died while in state and an additional 17 died while outside, according to the state tracking website.
The state reported Tuesday there were 196 people hospitalized across Alaska with COVID-19, down slightly from 200-plus last week.
The state’s largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, shifted to crisis standards of care and rationing treatment for patients due to a combination of staffing and equipment shortages. COVID-19 cases accounted for about a third of the hospital’s patients.
A triage team has been asked to help with several patient-care decisions, according to a report in the Anchorage Daily News.
It’s likely the hospital will remain in crisis mode for at least another two weeks “while we wait for this current surge to flatten and then dip back down,” chief of staff Dr. Kristen Solena Walkinshaw said in a media briefing on Monday.
Providence set up a three-person team to help doctors and nurses struggling with decisions, as well as the strains of dealing with younger, more severely ill COVID-19 patients including pregnant women, some of whom have died of the virus, Solena Walkinshaw said.
One person died who was unable to get the continuous dialysis therapy needed, she said. While four patients needed the therapy, only two could get it. The doctor said at the news briefing that a patient died at a rural hospital because the individual needed cardiac catheterization and was “waiting for a bed to free up so we could transfer them.”
The heavy caseload at Anchorage hospitals has delayed or prevented rural facilities from transferring patients in need of higher-level care.
The crisis is getting increasingly harder on staff, Solena Walkinshaw said at the briefing.
Someone spat on a Providence resident as he left work. Families continue to deny that the virus is real even as they’re saying goodbye to their loved ones on a video call as they get taken off life support, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
“Health care has become politicized and our entire country is polarized and there’s so much discordance around particularly COVID,” Solena Walkinshaw said. “Our health care workers feel incredibly unappreciated.”
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this month said fully vaccinated people are 10 times more likely to avoid hospitalization and 11 times less likely to die with the virus compared to unvaccinated people.
“Getting vaccinated protects against severe illness from COVID-19, including the Delta variant,” the report said.
Statewide, 57.5% of residents 12 or older were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, and 62.5% had received at least their first dose of a vaccine, according to the health department. The rate in Wrangell was 66% of eligible residents with at least their first dose.
The Alaska Chamber is using $1 million of federal pandemic aid funneled through the state to run weekly $49,000 drawings to encourage people who haven’t been vaccinated to get the shot. The contest ends Oct. 30.
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