Alaska's COVID-19 cases on the rise

ANCHORAGE — Gov. Mike Dunleavy held another press conference on COVID-19 on Tuesday to announce rising cases of coronavirus in Alaska along with other reporting on benefits and assistance available to Alaskans. As of Wednesday, Alaska has 38 new cases with a total of 978, with 198 of those cases coming from nonresidents. Of the existing 978 cases, 436 are active and 528 are recovered. A total of 68 people have been hospitalized and 14 have died. As of Wednesday, 112,185 tests for COVID-19 have been administered in Alaska.

“What we do know and we still know about Alaska is our numbers in many respects, most respects actually are still very very low. Our cases have gone up and there’s a couple of reasons we believe that’s happened, one is certainly our testing has gone up however we do believe that the virus is spreading in Alaska with more mixing, with more folks getting out, again it’s just understandable that this is going to happen,” said Dunleavy. “I don’t want to say don’t get complacent but I want to remind folks that the virus is real, it’s alive, and it’s spreading.”

In the Mat-Su, Wednesday saw the highest single day total for positive cases with seven. A total of 27 positive cases have been identified over the last week and 47 of the 88 total cases in the Mat-Su are active cases. A total of 7,659 people have been tested, accounting for .07 percent of the population of the Mat-Su. The Valley has 2.4 new cases per 100,000 residents over the last 14 days, equivalent to the state average. Alaska only has nine out of very 100,000 residents hospitalized with COVID-19 while the national rate is 98 per 100,000. Dunleavy said that the last few months during the pandemic has been about finding a balance between getting the economy and businesses moving forward and keeping people out of the hospital.

“It’s a highly contagious virus, that’s what we know. We know it jumps from person to person, we know that. We know that staying away from others makes it more difficult for the virus to move from person to person,” said Dunleavy. “We said that the numbers would go up because we know that this is a highly contagious virus, but our death rates have still stayed pretty low, our hospitalization rates are still fairly low, those in ICU, low. For example as of today there’s three positive patients with the virus in a hospital. There is 1 patient on a ventilator. We have 245 ventilators available so our equipment, ventilators bed capacity are still in really good shape.”

Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink noted on Tuesday that seven different bars across the state had seven positive cases attributed to them. Alaska’s percent positive rate is currently at 1.5 percent. Zink said that the lowest Alaska’s percent positive rate was occurred at the end of May with a rate of .15 and the highest was in April with 4 percent positive.

“While we do see a significant increase in cases here in the state, we are in a much better place than many of our colleagues in the Lower 48,” said Zink. “Our disease activity, our epidemiology, this unfortunately has changed from kind of a green to a yellow. It’s a little bit more caution now for a couple of different reasons, there’s kind of been three kind of distinct little wavelets that we’ve had associated with our epidemiology here.”

Zink detailed the waves of positives at the start of the pandemic, with residents in the senior care facility in Anchorage and Memorial Day festivities attendees on the Kenai Peninsula making up the second wave and new outbreaks occurring recently across the state. While cases are increasing rapidly as of late, Zink noted that Alaska has something to be proud of.

“We are the 6th most tested state in the country and we do have the lowest percent positivity rate in the country so those are good things to see and appreciate a lot of time and work that people and partners across the state have put into that. That trend is going up slightly though, we have started to trend upward on a percent positivity rate,” said Zink. “We really ask young people, you are really the ones who get to make a huge difference right now and so really keeping your circles small and outside makes a big difference in minimizing the spread of this disease.”

Dunleavy called on Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Executive Director Bryan Butcher to detail the Alaska housing loan program. July 1 is the end of the sunset date for the moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent, foreclosures and repossession of vehicles, but Butcher said that many mortgage lenders may be able to extend foreclosures until the end of August.

“There is going to be a little bit more time to work through those which is going to be beneficial for Alaskans,” said Butcher.

The deadline for state taxes to be filed is July 15 but does not include property tax and the moratorium for disconnection of residential utility services and state programs such as student loans will continue until November 15. Butcher said that $10 million of CARES act funds had been paid out to families up to $1,200 per household and 22,000 Alaskans received rental or mortgage assistance.

“As a result of the applications every family that meets the criteria and put an application in will get this needed rental or mortgage relief. There were 8,025 applications submitted by the deadline from every corner of the state,” said Butcher.

Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development Commissioner Julie Anderson also illustrated assistance programs. As part of Dunleavy’s CARES act distribution plan, $568 million has been set aside for communities and $290 million designated for small business relief grants. Anderson said that Credit Union 1 had received over 2,000 applications totaling $85 million dollars for small business relief grants.

“We want these funds to go to as many small businesses that are eligible as quickly as possible,” said Anderson.

Department of Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner Tamika Ledbetter said that jobs had increased from April to May by 15,700, although Alaska was still 40,000 jobs under the 2019 total. Ledbetter said that 60,000 Alaskans had received unemployment insurance benefits. The program paid out $485 million with $65 million directed toward independent business owners. Department of Health and Social Services Director Heidi Hedberg said that Alaska has now secured a stable supply of personal protective equipment.

“We were able to really increase our quantities to the point where at the end of June we have a stable supply of PPE,” said Hedberg.

Hedberg updated the numbers of travelers into the state of Alaska after the amendment to Health Mandate 10 three weeks ago. Hedberg said that airports are averaging 4,500 to 5,000 arrivals weekly and there has been an increase in travelers getting tested prior to arrival. With airport testing, 45 positive cases have been identified.

“There is a significant increase in travelers getting tested before they travel to Alaska. This is good news. We are excited to see that our message is getting out that travelers are getting tested before they arrive in Alaska,” said Hedberg.