Alaska is reporting two new coronavirus deaths along with more than 300 new cases of the virus in a Tuesday update from the state Department of Health and Social Services, which confirmed the COVID-19 deaths yesterday of an Anchorage woman in her 70s and an Anchorage man in his 60s. Their deaths raise Alaska’s death toll from the pandemic to 384 residents. The department also reported 307 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday, including 283 resident cases and 24 nonresident cases.
Across the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Homer reported 14 cases, Anchor Point 9, Soldotna 7, Kenai 5, Kenai Peninsula Borough South 1, and Nikiski 1. There were 4 nonresident cases reported in Homer, 3 in Soldotna, and 1 in Seward.
South Peninsula Hospital CEO Ryan Smith told the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly Tuesday evening:
“What I would say is that this delta variant has posed an increase for us. We have, at our highest point, had six inpatients in the hospital with COVID two days ago. Today, as we sit here, I think there’s five inpatients, which is as high as we’ve admitted through the pandemic. This is the most number of patients that we’ve had at the hospital since the pandemic began. We did have some back in November, more of our employees who were out on isolation, pre-vaccination. This is the highest number of employees that we’ve had out on isolation or quarantine since vaccinations started. It’s caused us some service disruption. Our dietary cafeteria service has like ten employees that have been out at any one time. We’ve had some disruptions to services for employee lunch and breakfast, that type of stuff. It has posed some challenges for us for sure.”
Smith also said:
“We are seeing an increase in services at the hospital with this new delta variant, the number of swabs we’re doing, the number of patients we are seeing and the number of employees that we have in isolation and quarantine. You can see the vaccine coverage and the state numbers on the next slide, which at the hospital are a little better than these numbers. About 68% of our patient care staff are vaccinated. Overall, about 65% of our staff are vaccinated.”
The current statewide alert level is high and all eleven regions of the state are in high alert status with widespread community transmission. Kenai Peninsula Borough is seeing higher case rate per 100,000 than Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and other more populated regions of the state.
58% of Alaskans age 12 and older have received at least their first vaccine dose. 52.5% of Alaskans age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated. The Kenai Peninsula Region is listed as 44.6% vaccinated.
