Monday, the Department of Health and Social Services announced three new Alaska resident deaths and 589 new people identified with COVID-19 in Alaska. 557 were residents in: Anchorage (222), Wasilla (87), Eagle River (42), Kodiak (38), Fairbanks (35), Palmer (26), Bethel (16), Chugiak (12), Kusilvak Census Area (11), Kenai (10), Bethel Census Area (7), North Pole (7), Soldotna (6), Delta Junction (5), Homer (4), Sterling (3), Valdez-Cordova Census Area (3), Utqiaġvik (3), Big Lake (2), Juneau (2), Nikiski (2), Nome (2), Valdez (2), and one each in Aleutians East Borough, Haines, Kenai Peninsula Borough North, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Sitka, Willow, Wrangell, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, and one unknown location.
32 new nonresident cases were identified yesterday:
- Unalaska: twenty in seafood industry
- Five with both location and purpose under investigation
- Two with purpose North Slope oil industry and location under investigation
- Anchorage: one with purpose under investigation
- Fairbanks: one with purpose under investigation
- Juneau: one with purpose under investigation
- Southeast Fairbanks census area: one with purpose mining
- Wasilla: one with purpose under investigation
Seventy-seven resident cases and five nonresident cases were subtracted from the dashboard through data verification procedures. This brings the total number of Alaska resident cases to 36,196 and the total number of nonresident cases to 1,343.
The backlog of 1,600 cases from the lab reported earlier this month have all been added to the dashboard as of today. Please note, however, that with the high number of cases, all parts of Alaska’s health care and public health system are under strain, so it’s not uncommon for technology failures and personnel shortages to occur throughout the system which regularly causes delays in timely reporting for many providers.
ALERT LEVELS – The current statewide alert level, based on the average daily case rate over 14 days per 100,000, is high at 89.49 cases per 100,000. All regions in Alaska are in high alert status with widespread community transmission occurring.
High (>10 cases/100,000)
- YK-Delta Region: 161.8 cases per 100,000
- Matanuska-Susitna Region: 158.58 cases per 100,000
- Kenai Peninsula Borough: 104.02 cases per 100,000
- Anchorage Municipality: 93.93 cases per 100,000
- Southwest Region: 80.34 cases per 100,000
- Northwest Region: 63.27 cases per 100,000
- Other Interior Region: 48.74 cases per 100,000
- Fairbanks North Star Borough: 41.19 cases per 100,000
- Other Southeast Region – Northern: 26.89 cases per 100,000
- Juneau City and Borough: 22.78 cases per 100,000
- Other Southeast Region – Southern: 14.69 cases per 100,000
CASES: SEX & AGES – Of the 557 Alaska residents, 302 are male and 244 are female and eleven are unknown. 34 are under the age of 10; 69 are aged 10-19; 122 are aged 20-29; 86 are aged 30-39; 90 are aged 40-49; 76 are aged 50-59; 56 are aged 60-69; 20 are aged 70-79 and 4 are aged 80 or older.
CASES: HOSPITALIZATIONS & DEATHS – There have been a total of 790 hospitalizations and 145 deaths, with six new hospitalizations and three deaths reported yesterday. Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones.
All three deaths were recent:
- a Seward male in his 50s,
- an Anchorage male in his 60s, and
- an Anchorage male in his 50s.
There are currently 151 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who are hospitalized and 15 additional patients who are considered persons under investigation (PUI) for a total of 166 current COVID-related hospitalizations. Twenty-four of these patients are on ventilators. The percentage of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is 15.1%.
TESTING – A total of 1,082,140 tests have been conducted, with 36,319 tests conducted in the previous seven days. The average percentage of daily positive tests for the previous seven days is 6.5%.
TAKE ACTION to protect yourself and others: coronavirus.dhss.alaska.gov/#takeaction
Notes: Cases reported to the Section of Epidemiology are increasing. Reports are received electronically, by phone and by fax. Cases are verified, redundancies are eliminated and then cases are entered into the data system that feeds into Alaska’s Coronavirus Response Hub. Because of the number of reports being received, there have been delays in getting reports entered and counted. Extra personnel continue to focus on the effort to process and count reports and minimize the delay from receipt to posting on the Hub. Daily case counts seem likely to remain at this level or higher for the near future.
This report reflects data from 12 a.m. until 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 6 that posted at noon today on the Alaska Coronavirus Response Hub. There is a lag between cases being reported on the DHSS data dashboard and what local communities report. Each case is an individual person even if they are tested multiple times. Total tests are a not a count of unique individuals tested and includes both positive and negative results. The current number of hospitalized patients represents more real-time data compared to the cumulative total hospitalizations. Current hospitalizations are reported for all facilities, not just general acute care and critical access facilities, as is the default on the dashboard. Total number of hospital beds available fluctuate daily as the number of available hospital staff changes. All data reported in real-time, on a daily basis, should be considered preliminary and subject to change. To view more data visit: data.coronavirus.alaska.gov.