Alaska's COVID-19 numbers drop

ANCHORAGE — On Tuesday as the state of Alaska changed its requirements for incoming travelers to the state, Governor Mike Dunleavy held a press conference to discuss the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been fantastic to see our low rates of deaths overall but as the Governor mentioned, every one of these cases is an individual person and we really want to do everything we can to minimize the impact on communities and families and promote health and well being,” said Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink. “It’s not that one or two percent of our population is high risk. Depending at where you’re at in the state it’s about anywhere from 35 to almost 50 percent of the population is considered high risk for hospitalization and death associated with covid so it’s just a lot of people so that’s why it’s really important for all of us to do our part to minimize the spread of this disease.”

On Wednesday, the DHSS reported 68 new cases of COVID-19 in Alaska, with 62 of those in residents. Only one new case was announced in the Mat-Su Valley out of Wasilla and the Mat-Su has 352 total cases with 269 of those active. Alaska Director of Public Health Heidi Hedberg said that almost all travelers through Alaskan airports are compliant with regulations and the state is receiving feedback from travelers and airports about the travel portal. As Alaska remains first in the nation in testing per capita and has had the lowest number of deaths per capita due to COVID-19, Dunleavy put the statistics in perspective.

“When we talk about this coronavirus and managing it, again I would say that Alaska’s numbers are still pretty good. Our hospitalization capacity is still pretty good, you know I don’t know how you spin deaths as pretty good you really can’t do that but our deaths, the number of folks that have passed away from coronavirus in Alaska is still the lowest at 26,” said Dunleavy.

Alaska has the seventh lowest case rate in the nation as well. Dunleavy described the economic fallout as the flipside of the COVID-19 coin opposite health. Alaska Industrial Export Authority Executive Director Alan Weitzner detailed the launch of the akcaresonline.org portal to help distribute CARES act monies to businesses. Weitzner said that new flexibility has been provided to include more businesses and 501©6 nonprofits and that the 740 applications total nearly $36 million. Weitzner said that two weeks ago 432 grants had been approved, and now 1,840 have been approved for a cumulative total of $32.9 million with $10.3 million awaiting account creation by business owners.

“What we want to do to the best of our ability and we’re still working with the Federal Government. Hopefully in the near future we can get more flexibility on usage of this money but we’ve done the best we can and we’re still working through some holes to get money out as quickly as possible to our businesses,” said Dunleavy.

Zink noted changes in the dashboard switching to where samples were collected and on what date the samples were collected. Zink also said that using race and ethnicity data, higher rates of hospitalization are occurring among pacific islander, Alaska native and asian populations. After the Mat-Su Borough has made every effort to illuminate that second class boroughs do not have health powers to mandate masks and asking Dunleavy to take the lead, Dunleavy answered numerous questions about masks on Tuesday.

“The individual municipalities have the ability to implement a mask mandate, especially if the data warrants it, especially if in consultation with our medical folks and their medical folks that when we look at it on an individual basis when we’re dealing with clusters or outbreaks we feel that that’s going to be something that we would advise them to do,” said Dunleavy. “The Idea that I implement a statewide mask mandate again for communities that have never had an outbreak doesn’t make sense to us from a medical perspective, from a scientific perspective. Again it might make sense from certain political perspectives but we can’t politicize this.”