ANCHORAGE, Alaska: There are now more Alaska residents hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any time during the pandemic, as growing coronavirus cases overwhelm some testing facilities, causing long waits statewide .
On Tuesday, the state also reported six deaths from people with the virus, four residents and two non-residents. Residents’ deaths involved a woman from Anchorage in her 20s, a woman from Anchorage in her 30s, a man from Anchorage in her 70s and a man from the Dillingham area in her 60s.
In all, 431 Alaska and 13 nonresidents have died from the virus.
On Tuesday, 152 people had been hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services. The previous record of hospitalizations was 151, reached in December 2020 and was matched this past weekend.
For weeks, Alaska hospitals have been operating at an unsustainable level due to the combination of busy admissions in the summer, staff shortages, and the growing increase in COVID-19 patients with high needs. On Monday, Jared Kosin, president and CEO of the Alaska Association of Hospitals and People’s Residences, described the current situation as a crisis and said the next two weeks would be crucial in determining how far it would look. affected hospital capacity.
One of the worst cases would seem to be that field hospitals stood up, postponed critical procedures and surgeries and a depleted workforce, Kosin said.
The state reported on Tuesday 634 new cases of COVID-19, 601 of them residents. The recent increase in Alaska cases and hospitalizations has been driven in large part by the highly contagious delta variant.
Local Juneau officials reported 72 new cases on Tuesday alone, 63 residents and nine nonresidents. Juneau public health officials described several ongoing trends: some cases associated with a local mine; some cases on small and large cruises; home spread; and the cases that appear from regular tests in the coexistence facilities.
The statewide transmission level of COVID-19 has triggered a wave of testing requiring overwhelming facilities, said Dr. Coleman Cutchins, a state pharmacist. Test lab delivery times remain the same: 24 to 72 hours, with many results within 48 hours.
But it takes hours to test in some places.
“What I was seeing is a lot of people exposed,” Cutchins said Tuesday. “It’s overwhelming our test sites, overwhelming our hospitals, overwhelming our doctors’ offices.”
Anchor test sites reported relatively short waiting times through Monday, according to Christy Lawton, municipal director of public health. That was when the municipal sites collected about 1,700 tests, the highest number since November. Lawton said the busiest places seemed to be in Eagle River and Muldoon. Test response time is still about 24 hours, “which is great,” he said.
At Mat-Su, a popular test site in the old Sears building in Wasilla reported delays of more than three hours and people in the queue described waiting four hours or being sidelined. Delays were also reported in Fairbanks and the Kenai Peninsula.
Test waits are worse in communities in the state with lower vaccination rates, Cutchins said. Mat-Su is the least vaccinated urban part of the state, with just over 38% of eligible residents being fully vaccinated. Vaccination rates on the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks are just under 50%.
Another long-line factor is unvaccinated people who work for employers who need vaccination or testing. These people add to the pressure of testing and make it difficult for people with symptoms to test quickly.
“We really encourage people with any symptoms to get tested,” he said. “Don’t let a line deter you from that.”
Across the state, 61% of those over the age of 12 had at least one dose of vaccine, while nearly 55% considered themselves completely vaccinated.
On average over the past seven days, 7.56% of COVID-19 tests turned positive in the state. Generally, anything above 5% is seen as an indication that there is not enough ongoing testing.
The positivity rates of the seven-day test in Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula were reported on Tuesday at 14% and 13%, respectively.
People should get tested, vaccinated or not, as they see possible symptoms, Cutchins said.
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