The Department of Health and Social Services announced 86 new people with COVID-19 in Alaska on Thursday. 84 are residents, including two residents of Kenai.
There are now 3,163 active cases of COVID-19 in the state, including 260 on the Kenai Peninsula. There are 76 active cases in Soldotna, 57 in Kenai, 47 in Seward, 38 in Homer, and 20 in Sterling.
The two new Kenai cases marks a lower number for the area than the significant uptick that caused the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District to place the Central peninsula into High Risk category, forcing all Central peninsula schools into 100% remote learning.
This week, Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, was asked what might be behind the spike that has impacted the lives of so many Kenai Peninsula residents: “We continue to follow a whole bunch of different clusters around the state. We really saw a huge surge in Anchorage initially, and those have been coming down. Now, we see it throughout the state – these smaller clusters. I think it’s important to remember that if we have a positive case and they have a work environment or a home where other people around them on a regular basis, sometimes these clusters can last for a bit as we’re testing additional people in their circle to make sure that we identify all of those cases thoroughly and quickly. It’s just really about how much time we spend with others. We’re seeing it in backyard BBQs, we’re seeing it in gatherings, we’re seeing it in workplaces. We’re seeing it whenever people are close together and spending prolonged periods of times. We see the tail end of those clusters as family members and others get tested and work through the process. So, we’ll continue to see that in Kenai as we move through these cases.”
There are currently 45 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who are hospitalized and six additional patients who are considered persons under investigation for a total of 51 current COVID-related hospitalizations.
A total of 312,647 tests have been conducted. The average percentage of daily positive tests for the previous seven days is 2.09%.