Governor Dunleavy urges vaccination as COVID-19 hospitalizations remain high and Alaska reports 7 deaths

Gov. Mike Dunleavy further urged Alaska to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as the state reported seven more virus-related deaths on Tuesday, near-record hospitalizations and nearly 700 new cases statewide.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning in Juneau, Dunleavy said he was clear that the state health system is struggling to meet demand and that health workers are being consumed.

”They definitely have problems with hospital capacity. I’ve been there, I’ve been to a couple of hospitals. And there are people who work long hours, there are people who leave work. This is reducing our capacity, ”he said.

Public health officials have said the best way for Alaskans to protect themselves and others from COVID-19 and protect hospital capacity is to get vaccinated.

“I strongly urge people to get a vaccine. I strongly urge them to do so,” said Dunleavy, who is fully vaccinated. The governor has recommended vaccines against COVID-19 in the past, but has also spoken out strongly. against vaccine mandates, including a general requirement affecting larger U.S. companies recently announced by President Joe Biden.

The larger hospitals in Anchorage and Mat-Su have described staffing at the crisis level and an overloaded system that seeks to provide care to more patients with COVID-19 and non-COVID patients. Meanwhile, smaller hospitals in peripheral communities, even in places with less widespread virus transmission, are struggling to transfer seriously ill people or struggling to care for them instead.

“We just want to make sure that when someone has to go to the hospital, whether it’s for diabetes, heart problems, traffic accidents (God forbid any of them) or the virus, they get the attention that all of us wait, ”Dunleavy said.

On Tuesday, 691 new cases were reported, including 676 among residents and 15 among non-residents. The seven recently reported deaths included six Alaska residents and one non-resident in the state. Since March 2020, 451 Alaska and 15 out-of-state people have died with COVID-19.

Alaska’s COVID-19 hospitalizations fell slightly from the record 210 registered Monday to 202 as of Tuesday afternoon, according to state data. More than half of these hospitalizations were concentrated in Anchorage and included 33 people with ventilators.

Hospitals say these figures are likely to be an underestimation of the true impact of COVID-19, as they do not include some long-term COVID-19 patients who no longer test positive but still need hospital care.

[Alaska’s COVID-19 hospitalizations are at pandemic highs. Here’s what that number really reflects.]

According to a New York Times tracker updated Tuesday, Alaska experienced in the last two weeks the second highest increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations among all states, surpassed only by North Dakota, which has a vaccination rate of about five points below that of Alaska. On Tuesday, the Alaska case rate was the third highest in the country, behind Tennessee and Kentucky.

Nationally, cases and hospitalizations related to the highly contagious delta variant have been on the rise, with states with lower vaccination rates typically more affected. The 64% increase in Alaska hospitalizations in the last two weeks is well above the national average of 8%.

After assuming the most vaccinated state title earlier this year, Alaska on Tuesday ranked 35th per capita. As of Tuesday, 61.9% of eligible Alaska had received at least one dose of vaccine and 56.5% were fully vaccinated, according to state data.

Most COVID-19 patients hospitalized statewide are not vaccinated, according to statistics. During the last week of August, 81% of hospitalized COVID-positive patients and 85% of ICU patients were not vaccinated, according to the Alaska State Residences and Hospital Association. Seventeen of 18 COVID-19 patients with ventilators were not vaccinated.

With Alaska ICUs and emergency rooms overflowing with patients and burdened by staff shortages and limited bed space, the Dunleavy administration recently drafted legislation to help hospitals and other facilities Medical treatments to treat the COVID-19 pandemic by relaxing state laws on telemedicine and health workers. background checks.

This bill died Monday in the Alaska House of Representatives after losing support for an amendment that could have prevented hospitals from limiting patient visits.

At Bethel, a new vaccination warrant has come into effect this week that requires all city employees to be vaccinated before Sept. 27, with possible exemptions for those with religious or medical objections.

The new policy was signed Monday by city manager Peter Williams, who said the city first tried a policy of regular testing of its employees, but it seemed inadequate.

“A person can carry this virus around them and is able to spread it before they can catch it with the tests,” he said.

Williams said he anticipated some setback in politics, but noted that those voices are a minority. There are just over 100 people working for the city and only 17 are not vaccinated, he said.

Bethel has also implemented a mask warrant and is handing out $ 100 for COVID-19 in an attempt to “be a part of controlling this situation,” he added.

Just over 57% of Bethel’s total population is fully vaccinated, above the state average of 47% of all Alaskans who are fully vaccinated.

[More than 440 Alaskans have died with COVID-19. We know little about them.]

State officials say the continued high number of new cases leads to delays in testing and contact tracking, both strategies used to limit the spread of the virus.

As of Tuesday, the state’s seven-day average positivity rate (the number of positive tests out of the total conducted) was 9.1%, a record almost since the pandemic began. Health officials say anything above 5% indicates the need for more testing.

Daily News reporter James Brooks contributed from Juneau.

This is a developing story. Please check for updates again.