The Kenai City Council held a special work session on Wednesday evening to discuss the state of the COVID-19 public health emergency on the City of Kenai. Among the guest speakers included Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anne Zink.
Dr. Zink noted that while she planned to offer a full update on the pandemic, she wanted to remind the Council that the State of Alaska is focused on more than just COVID, even though most communications focus on COVID, at the moment.
She said that everyone is entering into a tough phase in the pandemic right now, “What we’re seeing when so many people are susceptible to this disease is that we’re seeing more people getting sick, more people requiring hospitalization and more people passing away from COVID-19. Again, the older someone is, the more medical conditions, the more likely they are to pass away. that doesn’t mean 100%. I see patients all the time in their 80s do fine. I also see people in their 40s incredibly sick, getting intubated, and some haven’t lived. We see both of those things and there are trends, but to predict on a 1-to-1 basis becomes very hard. There’s a really interesting article that looked at identical twins who got it at the same time and how different their course was.”
Vaccines are making “remarkable” progress, according to Zink, “The little bit that I threw in there about vaccine is incredibly hopeful. It’s pretty remarkable to me to see that one year later, we’re at the point of getting to two major vaccines that have better efficacy than we expected. To have somewhere between 90 to 95% efficacy is remarkable. None of those vaccines skipped any steps. They went through all of the same steps and processes. They’re currently being evaluated by an independent body called the ACAP, as well as the FDA right now. We need these vaccines to be two things: #1 safe and #2 efficacious, meaning they helped prevent people getting seriously ill from the disease. It appears that these two vaccines appear to be that way and we’re looking forward to the rest of the data.”
She discussed that vaccinations are issued with two injections, and that there are some symptoms, but that they should not detract people from receiving both injections, “The other thing that I am concerned about is cold feet. We see from the data that from the first and particularly the second dose that people will develop some symptoms. They will feel achy. They won’t feel so well. They can develop a fever. Their arm may be sore from where it was injected. It looks like more of that than the flu vaccine.”
Will this deter people from coming back? “So I am a little nervous that people are going to get the first dose and won’t feel very good, but that’s your normal immune system building its response to the virus. I want to set that expectation ahead of time so people aren’t surprised. I know our hospital is asking people to take off the first or two days or so after they get their second dose preparing for the fact that a good number of them aren’t going to feel well. They’re looking at their staffing to try and rotate through to make sure they have a day or two off after their second dose to let their body respond to the vaccine.”
Mayor Brian Gabriel asked if Dr. Zink has a target for vaccinations, and she said that the State Section of Epidemiology would like to see over 60-70% to provide sufficient immunity on a large level.
Dr. Zink predicted that the end is in sight, and that she has every reason to be optimistic.
