Alaska reports 701 new cases of COVID-19 residents, the highest daily count of the year, as hospital counts increase

Alaska reported 701 new cases of COVID-19 in residents on Thursday, the highest daily count this year and one of the highest since the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020.

Hospitalizations of COVID-positive patients are also approaching pandemic highs, according to the state hospital association.

The count of hospitalizations of people with COVID-19 on Thursday stood in the 140s, according to Jared Kosin, president and CEO of the Association of Hospitals and Residences for Alaska Residences. The highest number of patients with COVID-19 in Alaska was 151 during the peak winter period.

But this time, the increase in hospitalizations is combined with the lack of staff and busy summer jobs to overwhelm the health care system, state providers and officials say. Vendors beg Alaska to get vaccinated and put masks inside to stop the spread of the aggressive delta variant.

Doctors and nurses are making difficult decisions about who gets the ICU beds and struggling to move seriously ill patients to other already overflowing facilities.

Anchorage hospitals are full and peripheral hospitals on the Kenai Peninsula and Mat-Su have a record number of COVID-positive patients, according to Kosin: 25 at Peninsula Central Hospital and 21 at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. where 10 have fans. .

“As for us, the crisis we have noticed is already here,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. It seems that it will get much worse ”.

The state control panel on Thursday showed 127 patients. This data is left behind in real time. Seventy were at Anchorage hospitals, where there were two ICU beds available throughout the city, according to a municipal board. Almost 20% of emergency room visits in the city were related to COVID.

On Thursday at the end, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and administration officials said they are speeding up the licensing process for health care workers, seeking federal contracts for more workers and taking other steps to increase the number of people they can treat. patients with COVID-19.

“Right now, it’s not the beds that limit, it’s not the fan capacity that limits, it’s the staff and the people,” said Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief physician.

“If there are people who want to come to the state of Alaska, we’re doing everything we can to make sure you can get a speedy process and come to work as a health care provider, so please do- ho, ”said Adam Crum, commissioner for the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services.

Most patients with severely ill COVID-19 are not vaccinated, according to providers.

Dunleavy and other officials, at a press conference broadcast on Facebook, said vaccination remains the best solution to the ongoing crisis.

But the governor stopped a step to urge vaccination, instead of saying Alaska should talk to their doctor about vaccination “if that’s what they want to do.”

“We know what we have to do. People know what to do, “Dunleavy said.” They need to have conversations with their doctor and make a decision, if that’s what they want to do. yes, especially with this variant that is highly contagious ”.

In response to a question from a journalist who asked if this is an effective technique to encourage vaccination, Dunleavy said, “This is not about North Korea. Don’t dictate to people how they live their lives.”

“I think it’s the best strategy. It’s 2021. This is not a place in Europe in 1939. You have conversations with people. … You have conversations with your doctors. You have conversations with your friends … People are not stupid, ”he said.

State vaccine numbers are rising, according to state health officials. More than 13,000 doses were administered last week, 24% more than a week ago, Zink said.

The continued acceleration in new cases (this week’s figures are 11% higher than the previous one) is causing accumulations in testing and contact tracking.

As high as it is, Thursday’s daily count is probably lower than reality, state health officials say.

“We’ve reported more than 700 cases today and we still haven’t managed to overcome the entire backlog,” said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, a state epidemiologist. “Right now we are seeing very high levels of transmission. We are dealing with a strain of the virus that is completely different in terms of transmission than previous strains. It’s probably twice as transmissible if not more … than the original Wuhan strain. “

[Some Alaska feed stores are out of a livestock dewormer because people bought it to treat COVID-19. Health officials say that’s a really bad idea.]

State contact plotters are struggling to keep up with the influx of new cases. Contact tracers contact people at risk for COVID-19 infection due to exposure to positive donors.

Delays in tracking contacts have caused health officials this week to instruct people to test positive for personal isolation and to contact their next contacts in person. Meanwhile, state contact tracers prioritize people with recent test results, within four days, to interrupt transmission while they are more infectious.

About 440 people still needed disclosure Monday, according to Sarah Hargrave, who oversees contact tracking in Alaska. That figure rose to 850 on Thursday morning as more cases dribbled through the system. In all, the state had interviewed or tried to reach 1,250 people as of Thursday.

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Contact tracking delays can begin with a long line of testing and then a wait of several days to get a test result that must then be reported to public health officials before it appears on a tracker system. contacts, Hargrave said.

Once they really reach someone, plotters struggle with “a growing number of people with whom it is very difficult to talk on the phone, who are highly debatable or, in some cases, totally belligerent,” he said.

Along with 261 cases in Anchorage and another 34 in Eagle River, the state account included 100 new cases in the Mat-Su towns of Palmer and Wasilla, 60 in Fairbanks and the North Pole, 43 in Ketchikan, 35 in Homer and 22 in Utqiagvik, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services board.

No further deaths were reported on Thursday. Health officials say at least 14 people died from the virus this month. In all, 427 Alaska and 11 nonresidents have died from the virus.

There were 127 people hospitalized with the virus on Wednesday, it was reported Thursday.

As of Thursday, 54.1% of eligible Alaska 12 and older were fully vaccinated and 60.3% had at least one dose.

The average of seven days of positive tests on the total administered was 7.03%.

Reporter James Brooks contributed.