Alaska’s COVID-19 coronavirus case count rose by 15 since the last Department of Health and Social Services report, which was released midday on Saturday.
The current number of Alaskans known to have contracted the Wuhan coronavirus is 272.
There were no new deaths reported; the number of Alaskans who have died from complications associated with the coronavirus is 8.
Thirty-one Alaskans have been hospitalized since the COVID-19 outbreak, although not all of those people are currently in the hospital; eight died, and many have been released.
Meanwhile, hospitals across the state are nearly empty, as other serious and not-as-serious medical conditions are not being treated in order to make beds available for COVID-19 patients.
An illustration of the empty-bed syndrome is Bartlett Memorial Hospital in Juneau, where the city-owned facility is losing $250,000 a day due to not being able to admit non-COVID patients. Nurses across the state are reporting they have been laid off due to lack of regular patients.
To date, 8,038 Alaskans have been tested for COVID-19. With 272 Alaskans showing positive for the coronavirus, the infection rate is 3.3 percent of those tested, and .037 percent of the 730,000 population.
The community breakdown for all known cases in Alaska to date:
- Anchorage: 127
- Kenai Peninsula: 15
- Ketchikan: 1
- Fairbanks/North Star Borough: 79
- Southeast Fairbanks Census Area: 1
- Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area: 1
- Mat-Su Borough: 14
- Juneau: 16
- Ketchikan: 15
- Petersburg: 2
- Craig: 1
- Bethel: 1
Globally, 1,833,685 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, and 113,295 deaths are attributed to the virus and its effects. While the United States has the most cases of COVID of any nation, it also has a low death rate compared to many countries.
China, where the virus is believed to have originated, reports 83,014 cases, and yet reports just 3,343 deaths.
In the United States, 526,396 cases are reported, and 20,463 deaths have been attributed to the disease, although some criticize the reporting standards being used as possibly over-inclusive.
Gosh, I thought all the restrictions were designed to prevent the collapse of the health-care system. It appears that in some cases, they are CAUSING the collapse.
Doctors should be allow to get back to work….there are many medical needs that they could be addressing safely…..i am losing my eye site and need surgery and would be happy to see an eye doctor that could do the surgery needed….
“China, where the virus is believed to have originated…”
Unless of course you are one of the billions of Chinese who think that the Americans “manufactured” this virus.
Truth be told, no one can say for certain exactly who was patient “number one” and many scientists are now saying the new strain of Coronavirus has been around since November or October of 2019.
I cannot believe the media induced panic over this flu like virus.
3 million people die each year in America…by my math that comes out to roughly 8,000 every day?
So you are siding with the tyranny country of China comrade? That doesn’t surprise me a bit. Mole!
Dry up.
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Your virtue signalling is nominal. And tedious.
Time to end this Medical-Tyranny madness! What’s the deal with this RINO Governor? Is he really a big Lib like his mother who was a huge DNC/Union operative in PA? He’s doing a great job at crashing the economy and installing a Fascist Police State complete with an email address to snitch on your neighbors for going out of their homes. He either needs to change course or be subject to a Recall.
Friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data.
(good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization.
data is a science that can’t be replaced by one-off anecdotes. try to remember this to avoid fear-based sensationalism or conspiracy theories taking over your mind
Please, the models have been off from the beginning, and it hasn’t even been close. It’s not a conspiracy theory, misinformation or anecdotal. It is as plain as the nose on anyone’s face. What you are pushing is a Lie wrapped in phoney agenda. Plus there is no Virus Clause in the Constitution that allows for it to be suspended. Open the Economy Up NOW!
There is a “clause” that covers any threats to the country. Stop shouting. Stall calm, and take another hit.
Suzanne. I had a tissue graft for my shoulder and they wouldn’t allow my procedure. We lost a perfectly good graft and I am back on the donor list to try again.
Sorry to hear about that Joe.
Suzanne, will you be specific about where the cases in Mat-Su are located? I know prior to this you mentioned Wasilla & Palmer – are those the only 2 places in Mat-Su which are affected so far? Thank you for the info.
This is totally stupid. Open the hospitals to everyone in need with a reasonable number of bedstooms reserved for the virus patients who would get an automatic priority. Day surgery in particular should resume immediately. Contact our legislators who can do something of value for a change.
We’ve tested 1.07% of our population.
We need to test to see who is infected, and we should test for immunity to see who can safely go back to work and not pose a threat to others.
We are not seeing any objective measure of increase in testing capabilities, at best, a couple three hundred a day increase but not every day, sometimes less.
Not much when overall testing still only stands at around 8 thousand people out of a population of about 750,000.
What we are seeing for a relative steady state in the rate of testing is that the number of cases found in that testing is rising steadily.
Here we are at the end of the first six weeks since our first case was discovered and the number has grown almost 3 hundred fold.
As evidenced by how the virus spreads, the next few weeks will likely bring exponential growth in the number of cases and that’s still only the few we are able to find with our dismally inadequate testing regimen.
Only 742,000 tests to go. At the going rate, that’s about 5 to 10 years from now before we get every Alaskan tested.
There is no reason to test every person. That’s even dumber than quarantining an entire population. Esp since the survivor rate for the disease is 99.97% with 85% exhibiting no symptoms. To test everyone is just an asinine exercise in government idiocy. Plus, I and many other Liberty Lovers would refuse to be tested because the answer to 1984 is 7.62.
Madness.
“…where the city-owned facility is losing $250,000 a day due to not being able to admit non-COVID patients. ”
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To what part of The State did Americans give authority to deny all people access to medical care?
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Even in the Holy City of Juneau, people should see this as a potentially life-threatening civil-rights violation that must be reported to the U.S. Attorney right now.
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We suggest the U.S. Attorney because the Alaska Department of Law does not seem to be an option after the Great Alaska LeDoux Vote Experiment, failure to enforce legislators’ attendance when Governor D. called the special session, apparent non-responsiveness to North Slope Borough’s illegal seizure of RAVN Air property, the apparent non-support for Governor D. during his meeting with Chief Justice Bolger, himself an advocate for Governor D’s removal, and the Department’s utter silence on this subject.
It is interesting how the greatest generations motto of “Can Do” has turning into the current snowflake variety of can’t do or wont do. Where oh where did we go wrong?
Re: “Testing Everyone” – …actually a totally random sample of 1,000 can provide results with a 95% confidence level, regardless of the population. Adding more samples only incrementally improves the confidence level. The challenge is ensuring the sampling is random.. Think of surveying dietary habits by standing outside a MacDonalds.
I should have mentioned, …obviously the population needs to be defined. E.g., sampling Anchorage for a virus infection will not tell you much about Juneau or Sitka.
sampling won’t tell you who to quarantine.
True, but it will give an over all view of the problem and help direct more intense testing efforts. This would all be in addition to testing people with symptoms and history of exposure I.e. health care workers.
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