On Monday, Governor Mike Dunleavy joined Alaska public health officials to provide an update on the novel coronavirus.
His primary point was to assure Alaskans that there have been no known cases of COVID-19 in Alaska, at this point, but that the state is preparing for the inevitability of a spread to Alaska, given the nature of the virus.
Governor Dunleavy: “Alaska, and this administration, we’ve been preparing for the potential of coronavirus coming to Alaska for at least a month and a half. When we first heard about this in China, we knew that we’re on an international travel route here in Anchorage, and that we have a lot of folks that travel in-and-out of state because of our geographic location. We anticipated that there might be the inevitability that there would be folks eventually, in Alaska, that would be infected by this new virus. So, we’ve been working with the federal government, we’ve been working with health officials in Atlanta and Washington, we’ve been in correspondence quite frequently with the White House. This morning, we had a meeting online with Vice President Pence whose been asked to spearhead this by the Trump administration. We have been meeting probably at least twice a week since January.”
The Governor is optimistic about the state’s readiness for the virus hitting Alaska, not only due to the preparations the administration has enacted, but also because of the state’s ability to react to other natural disasters: “Alaska is prepared to deal with this issue probably as well, or better than any state because we’ve been focused on this and working on this for some time. Alaska, as you know, is generally an independent lot. We understand that we live way up here in North America isolated from the rest of the country. We know how to deal with fires, we know how to deal with earthquakes, volcanoes, high winds, etc. So, this being a health issue, we want to make sure that we have protocols in place that once this virus arrives – and we think that it probably will just because of the way it’s spreading – that we’re prepared for it.”
As of this publication, the death toll in the United States from the novel coronavirus is at six, with a worldwide death toll currently at over 3,000 people.