The first 100 out-of-state health care workers have started arriving in Alaska to help at medical facilities overwhelmed with record patient counts due to surging COVID-19 infections.
The state health department has contracted to bring on 470 health care workers, including about 300 nurses, to help the strained workforce. Alaska is using $87 million in federal funds to cover the costs.
The first health care personnel reported to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage for orientation on Tuesday.
The contractor said the remaining nurses, certified nursing assistants and other health care workers will arrive in Alaska within seven to 10 days on short 30-day contracts, which could be extended, Anchorage TV station KTUU reported Monday.
Officials expect to quickly assign the contract workers where they are needed most. The Department of Health and Social Services has met individually with representatives of hospitals and long-term care facilities from across Alaska to determine their needs, KTUU reported.
Half of the contract workers will be based in Anchorage under the current plan, said Heidi Hedberg, director of the state Division of Public Health. The overall contract is for 90 days, with renewal options, she said.
Alaska averaged 1,250 new COVID-19 cases a day Sept. 21 through Sept. 28, more than double the rate of the past two months and triple the rate of the past three months, with hospitals filling up their intensive-care beds in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Wrangell officials reported nine new cases Thursday through Saturday last week, raising the September total to 14. All of the individuals were residents, and most had been close contacts of other infected individuals.
Alaska recently had the highest per-capita rate of new COVID-19 cases among the 50 states, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University, and among the highest rates of death, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, said she fought back tears during a Sept. 22 news conference outlining the latest state actions.
“I was really trying not to lose it. … I’d hoped we’d never be at this point in the pandemic,” she said in an interview afterward.
“I think this is what we’ve always been trying to avoid, was getting to the point where our hospital systems were being overwhelmed by the number of patients and starting to see that impact not only COVID patients but non-COVID patients as well,” she said.
In an acknowledgment that some hospitals are unable to handle the workload without limiting services, Alaska officials last week outlined plans to help hospitals administer “crisis standards of care” amid the surge of new patients.
State Health Department Commissioner Adam Crum last week signed an addendum to a public health emergency order which he said provides guidance to hospitals, care providers and local health authorities if crisis standards of care are needed.
The crisis standards provide guidelines for administering health care in extraordinary circumstances when there are insufficient staff and equipment resources to provide levels of care that patients would normally get.
Hospitals or health care facilities can contact the state health department if they think they need to implement crisis standards of care, and a 15-member committee will meet and help provide guidance on options, according to a department statement.
Alaska health officials will organize daily statewide meetings “to identify and prioritize transfers to available beds, treatments, and identify and mitigate gaps in the health care system.”
Earlier this month, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage implemented crisis standards. Dr. Kristen Solana Walkinshaw, the hospital’s chief of staff, said the number of patients and level of care they needed had exceeded the hospital’s resources.
At the same Sept. 22 news briefing with Dr. Zink, Gov. Mike Dunleavy asked Alaskans to “seriously consider” getting a vaccine. He said he hoped the message coming out of the news conference is that the state is “on top of this.”
The state reported Tuesday that 63% of eligible Alaskans have received at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, about a dozen percentage points below the nationwide average. Alaska ranks in the bottom third among states. The rate in Wrangell continues to hold steady at 66%, the lowest in Southeast.
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