Historic news

Gov. Mike Dunleavy called what may very well have been the final COVID-19 press conference after more than a year of state response to the spread of the novel coronavirus that entered the United States one year ago.

“The good news is starting tomorrow we’re opening up vaccinations for all Alaskans 16 and older. We’re the first state in the country that’s going to do this. We are headed toward also being the first state that will have herd immunity amongst all the other states. Why is this important, because we want to get our economy back up and running, we want to get our society back up and running, we want to put this virus behind us as far as possible as soon as possible,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy announced that with the new arrival of vaccine allocation from the Federal government, no more restrictions would be put on who was and was not eligible for the vaccine.

The state’s hotline for vaccine appointments is (907)646-3322 and the state website for vaccination information can be found at covidvax.alaska.gov.

“The state and IHS allocation alone will probably be over 100,000 or potentially well over 100,000 for the next month in combination with these other vaccine allocations,” said Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink.

Zink said on Tuesday that 16.4 percent of Alaskans had completed their vaccination series and 23.6 percent of Alaskans had received at least one dose of vaccine. Zink thanked state, municipal, tribal and military partners in distributing the vaccine effectively across Alaska. Zink said that the UK variant of the coronavirus is likely to be the predominant variant in the United States by this summer and that the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines approved by the FDA were all effective against variants.

“It’s important to emphasize that all three of these vaccines are safe and efficacious. They’ve been studied by the most rigorous body in the world looking at safety and efficacy. Over 100,000 people have been involved in the phase three trials of these vaccines looking at multiple ages as well as multiple races and ethnicities. To date over 309 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered worldwide and 92 million doses have been administered in the U.S. with additional safety metrics that have been watching these vaccines looking for any adverse reaction and they have been found to be incredibly safe and incredibly efficacious,” said Zink. “This is our shot to end this pandemic. This enables people to gather indoors without masks.”

Dunleavy contracted COVID-19 last month and was happy to report that he suffered only mild symptoms of the virus, but noted that the quarantine experience caused he and his family a considerable inconvenience.

“My category was not yet there for me to get the vaccine. If it was at that time, I probably would’ve gotten the vaccine knowing what I know and I will get the vaccine knowing what I know and the reason I’ll get the vaccine is because I don’t want to be inconvenienced again,” said Dunleavy. “There’s a group of Alaskans that have already gotten the vaccine. That’s great. There’s a group of Alaskans that won’t get the vaccine and don’t want it. I respect that. I respect my fellow Alaskans for a whole host of reasons why they don’t want to get the vaccine or cannot get the vaccine and for those Alaskans that are thinking about it, I just wanted to relay to you my personal experience again.”

Dunleavy was asked about the possibility of another emergency declaration after his disaster declaration expired on Feb. 14. The legislature is currently moving forward a pared down version of an emergency declaration to expand telehealth and airport testing, among other items.

“If enough people get the vaccine, get the vaccination we then as we said, we launch towards herd immunity and hopefully we become the first state that gets there and this is going to bode well for us. So I think it makes things moot if we all consider looking at getting a vaccine for those of us that want to get it,” said Dunleavy. “I don’t think we need to be looking at a full blown health emergency, health declaration. We talked about this a few weeks ago. Again, this is a testament to Alaskans who’ve worked really hard to get us to the point where we are today, but again we’ll work with the legislature to get a bill passed that would be very limited, very focused.”

To date, 57,449 Alaskans have contracted COVID-19 and 301 have died. There are 33 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, but over 296,000 doses of vaccination have been administered.

“Every time I work in the emergency department I see people who get incredibly sick and often times they say to me I just thought this would be the flu, I didn’t think this would be this big of a deal. But when you get vaccinated, you basically teach your body how to respond and how to prevent this virus from affecting you,” said Zink.

Dunleavy said he was hopeful that by the summer, Alaskans would be able to gather together once again and the economy would receive a needed shot in the arm from the tourism industry.

“We have I think a number of effective systems in place, Indian Health Service, Alaska Native Health Services, our municipal partners, our business partners, the state system itself. I think it all works pretty well together and I think as a result of that we were able to get the vaccination out early. We were able to vaccinate our frontline healthcare workers and our elders in our congregate settings and then all over Alaska, they’ve done a fantastic job,” said Dunleavy. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job in addressing the issue . It’s not over. This announcement today is going to I think hopefully give us a boost. It’s not over, but one of these days it will be over.”