Alaska surpasses previous hospitalization record and reports death of 6 people with COVID-19, including a 20-year-old woman

There are now more Alaskans 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 recent deaths of people with the virus, including four residents and two non-residents. Residents’ deaths involved an Anchorage woman in her 20s, an Anchorage woman in her 30s, an Anchorage man in her 70s and a man in the Dillingham area in her 60s. The non-residents who died were men. of 70 years in Anchorage.

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 cases on Tuesday alone, 63 residents and nine non-residents. 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.

In the northern slope district, the Arctic Slope Native Association said on Tuesday that 37 people, mostly residents of Utqiagvik, had tested positive, including 15 young people under the age of 18. they are required to wear a “hospital-grade procedure mask” because of the risks associated with the delta variant, which has arisen in the region.

The statewide transmission level of COVID-19, especially in communities with lower vaccination rates, 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 figure 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 Capstone Clinic test site in the old Sears building in Wasilla reported Monday 4-and-a-half-hour waits Monday, according to Capstone medical director Dr. Wade Erickson. The switch to a triple-line format reduced the wait to 90 minutes on Tuesday, Erickson said.

“We are in higher test figures than at the peak of January and it came quickly,” he said. “It just overwhelmed our ability to increase our workforce.”

Delays were also reported in Fairbanks and the Kenai Peninsula.

“That was the combination of the Foo Fighters, the state fair, the start of school, all in the same two weeks, just a lot of big events,” Erickson said. “Some rise was expected, but it simply overwhelmed the system by how quickly it arrived.”

Communities with the lowest vaccination rates experience the longest waiting times, according to him and Cutchins. Mat-Su is the least vaccinated region in the state, with just over 38% of eligible residents 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 try it,” Cutchins said. “Don’t let a line deter you from that.”

[‘Be vigilant’: Vaccine breakthrough COVID-19 cases in Alaska are surprising, usually less severe and part of the reality of the pandemic for now]

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. The state has information on test sites, which include airports, but people with any symptoms should not use airport test sites, he said.

The municipality of Anchorage also offers information on test sites on its online virus control panel.

Juneau officials on Tuesday released a guide to help people know when the test is taking place:

• You are ill: If you feel even slightly ill with new symptoms such as fatigue, chills, cough, fever, or decreased taste or smell, take the test.

• You have traveled: if you are a passenger arriving in Juneau, take a test at the airport, avoid inland public areas and crowded places until the results return and return to the airport for a follow-up test in three or five days.

• You are a close contact: You have been less than 6 meters away from someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period during the person’s infectious period. A positive COVID person is usually infectious from two days before the test or before any symptoms appear, whichever comes first.

[Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported there were seven deaths in people with COVID-19 reported Tuesday. There were six.]