COVID daily update: 14 more cases; 133 total in Alaska

By
Suzanne Downing
-
23

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services today announced 14 new cases of COVID-19 in five Alaska communities – Anchorage (2), Eagle River (2), Fairbanks (5), Juneau (4) and Kenai (1). One is a worker on the North Slope. This brings the total confirmed case count in Alaska to 133.

Two of the new cases are older adults (60+); 10 are adults aged 30-59; and two are younger adults aged 19-29. Five are female and nine are male. Five of the cases are close contacts of previously diagnosed cases; two are travel-related and seven are still under investigation.

So far the communities in Alaska that have had confirmed cases include: Anchorage (including JBER), Eagle River/Chugiak, Girdwood, Homer, Fairbanks, North Pole, Ketchikan, Juneau Palmer, Seward, Soldotna, Sterling and Kenai.

Nine of the Alaskans with COVID-19 are hospitalized, two more than Monday. There have been no additional deaths beyond the three already announced.

23 COMMENTS

  1. The case on the slope highlights that air travel would have been the best travel ban (like hundreds of physicians asked) instead we got told to “shelter in place” while thousands of seafood processing workers and fishing deckhands fly into our state.
    The government response is “knee jerk” and will not work since the virus is predicted to be around well into the summer and our country’s economy would not last through a shut down that long.
    What we are seeing is the global economies like oil and fishing got their way in Alaska at the expense of the local economy…typical Alaskan politics.
    P.S. A woman who says her husband works on the slope posted a comment and said that there are over 16 workers in quarantine, this decision to allow oil workers to fly into AK will come back to haunt us in the end.

    • Steve,

      Which is it, do you think a travel ban is unconstitutional or do you think we should ban all travel from out of state? These are confusing times to be sure, but to swing from one extreme to the other isn’t normal, are you doing ok buddy?

      • Steve O,
        Why do we get a “lock down” while out of state workers are allowed to fly in?
        Are there two types of citizenship these days in America?
        I am doing fine, but this administration is not protecting residents by allowing thousands of workers (some from the most hit areas) to flood our airports.
        Hundreds of Alaskan physicians also said air travel from outside should cease for a while.
        I do feel a travel ban is unconstitutional but there is a difference to limiting local travel and out of state workers (especially when oil is at $20 dollars per barrel right now).
        Use your head on this one and think how quickly our hospitals will be over capacity with thousands of more sick people stuck in AK.

        • Steve,

          The thing is, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say banning travel is unconstitutional and then call for a travel ban. Currently what we have from our state government is a mandated 14 day quarantine for those who have traveled from out of state, this is not unconstitutional…even the article you linked to yesterday admitted as much. But you want the state government to just put a blanket interstate travel ban in place that would be unconstitutional, you can’t have it both ways it doesn’t work that way. There is no need to feed the panic, there is enough going on already. You tell me to use my head and think, we should all be doing more of that.
          .
          I’m well aware of what sending out 15,000-20,000 out of state and foreign workers could potentially do to an area like Bristol Bay. Add in all of the other remote and not so remote areas and it could get really bad really quick. If you want to ban that from happening you can’t complain about a legal 14 day quarantine mandate that clearly will pass constitutional muster.
          .
          Maybe if you were able to point to which part of the constitution you think is being violated with a 14 day quarantine you could convince me that I am wrong, otherwise you are arguing with yourself.

      • Speaking of swinging from one extreme to the other, you’ve gone from “this is all an over-reaction” to now claiming we can’t be too cautious.
        These are confusing times? I don’t think they are. The people who know, scientists and doctors, have said from the beginning that this was a crisis looming over our heads and we’d best prepare.
        Those who listened instead to people with no expertise, people who downplayed the risks, they are now caught between what they wanted to be true and what is so readily apparent and true.
        These times wouldn’t be confusing if we’d paid attention when the warnings were given 3 months ago. It was never gong to be prevented, but we sure could have been better prepared, those doubting the experts held us back. Allowed others to deny the coming truth.
        Still today we are fighting to convince some who still refuse to believe what’s right in front of them. That kind of denial is still holding us back and keeping us from being as effective as we could be in fighting this crisis.

    • Steve Stine – indeed, the State’s decision to urge all Alaskans who were out of State to return home immediately (as evidenced by the March 20th Travel Advisory ) will no doubt be seen by history as a monumental blunder.

      • Do you think whoever is responsible for making that decision should bear accountability for that blunder?
        Or should we just allow it to be swept under the rug and claim no one could have known?

    • There is no one group more likely to get it except frontline workers. But just let people roam wherever they want and more cases will come. If more people don’t take this more serious more people will die. Stay home, limit visitors, spray hands and wash any package. Wash or spray anything you bring home from store. Wear a mask and nitrile gloves. Get smart fast or get dead fast. Third world countries are doing way better because they are taking it more serious and are being more aggressive in prevention.

    • Mongo-that won’t work

      We would quickly run out of ventilators from the flood of under 50 cases-who would live-but still need ventilators

      If we had unlimited medical resources that idea might work.

    • Sweden is doing this right now with mixed results. The responses to this virus will be studied for years to come. There is no doubt the effects of the self quarantine are just starting to take effect.

    • When the baseline data grows exponentially with each day, to revert to a single statistic from the past, you will seriously underestimate reality every time.

      Don’t just post a number, show your work, show the data and show the ‘math’ you think is correct for arriving at your conclusions.

      I’ve not found your numbers to be an actual reflection of what the baseline data shows.

      And we can’t obviously just quarantine the sick and those most susceptible, and ‘put people back to work’.

      We don’t know who is ‘sick’ because of asymptomatic cases, those people don’t know they are sick and no on can tell yet they still spread disease.

      A few hundred thousand dead on top of your 250thousand dead can’t be said to be any kind of acceptable tradeoff when the economic impact of a new second wave of contagion would likely double the negative economic impacts we are seeing today.

      We can’t wish our way out of this. A virus doesn’t react to your wishes.

      We also can’t accurately forecast the most susceptible because the disease doesn’t just kill one set of victims, it’s proven it can kill all age ranges and healthy individuals along with literally anyone else.

      And the most important reason we can’t do as you wish we could, we aren’t in any position to test our population to guarantee we aren’t just going to start the clock over.

      We would trigger a brand new wave of infection if we took your advice.

  4. Is it reasonable to ask if the slope worker is a resident, or was the virus flown into the state?

    • Guy, further investigation shows he is an Alaskan resident but had flown from out of state before the quarantine mandate.

    • What constitutes recovery. There is a presumption that having survived the initial infection that some sort of immunity is conferred. Do you have any citations?

      .

      I’ve seen reports if people being reinfected and people having their lungs scarred without any symptoms at all. Do you count as recovered if you die from pneumonia 6 months later?

    • Keep in mind that some so-called ‘recovered’ people have been found to be still shedding virus and still capable of infecting others even after being deemed ‘recovered’, without testing that we so far are still unable to deploy, saying someone has recovered just because they no longer demonstrate symptoms won’t slow or stop the virus. It would open the possibility to making it worse. We need to be able to test for actual immunity and abscence of further shedding before the number of so-called ‘recovered’ will mean they are no longer a possible danger. Developing and mobilizing such tests as needed will be a massive undertaking and will not happen overnight.

  6. Latest count:
    2 age 60+
    10 age 30 to 59
    2 age 19 to 29
    So much for quarantining the sick and most susceptible.
    It seems to me that people are not practicing the 6 ft. suggestion!

    • Went to a pick up site for groceries today and passing through town I saw all kinds of people ignoring the warnings and not practicing any of the suggestions/mandated behaviors.

      Not distancing, not refraining from entering crowded areas, also no gloves, no masks, and people generally behaving as if there was not a global pandemic killing people.

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