ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska’s hospitalizations hit a new record high for COVID-19-positive patients for a third day in a row Thursday as the highly infectious delta variant drives up case counts.
Hospitals report long wait times and full capacity as they balance staff shortages and busy summer admissions with the sudden influx of younger, sicker, mostly unvaccinated COVID-19-positive patients who need additional time and care.
By Thursday, there were 170 people hospitalized with the virus around the state, higher than at any other point in the pandemic, according to a municipal dashboard. There were three ICU beds available in the city.
Patient numbers rose quickly this week. On Tuesday, the state reported 152 people hospitalized with COVID-19, and over the weekend, 151, which tied the record set during the prior peak.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services is hoping to contract with Lower 48 medical workers to help staff hospitals, but that will take a few weeks, officials said at a briefing Thursday.
People working in those hospitals say there seems to be a disconnect between the urgency they see at work every day and the public’s behavior when it comes to masking or choosing to get vaccinated. Doctors, nurses and administrators liken it to working in a building on fire as people just walk by.
Chief nursing officer Karen Scoggins arrived at Soldotna’s Central Peninsula Hospital on Thursday morning to start her shift in an intensive-care unit filled entirely with COVID-19 patients.
The hospital is operating at 112% capacity: 55 patients for 49 beds. Some long-term patients are two to a room. Twenty-one of the patients have COVID-19, 17 of them unvaccinated. Scoggins, who works the floor in scrubs to help out, said nurses and other workers are doing everything to keep up, including volunteering for extra shifts.
As she got to work, a group of five PPE-clad colleagues “proned” several unconscious COVID-19-infected patients, turning them on their stomachs to help them breathe gently to protect the breathing tube in their mouths, the central line for medications, a catheter to carry urine. Families can only visit with them if they’re dying.
Later in the day, when Scoggins got off work, she expected to return to a community that seems unaware of the dire cases she’s seen all day. Scoggins wears a mask when she’s shopping. Few others do.
“It’s mentally and physically exhausting to feel like we’re doing everything we can to treat the patients that come in and then go out, there’s just a lack of information,” she said. “I get it, people are tired of it. We are too. But it is definitely challenging to face these two separate worlds.”
The state reported 727 new cases on Thursday, involving 682 Alaskans and 45 nonresidents. That’s lower than Wednesday’s near-record report of 801 cases, the state’s second highest tally, but officials say a data backlog means the daily case updates aren’t a reliable indicator of the true total.
Generally, Alaska’s case counts are probably increasing, and definitely not decreasing, according to epidemiologist Dr. Louisa Castrodale. Out-of-state residents are also testing positive at higher numbers than earlier this summer.
No new deaths were reported Thursday. A total of 435 Alaskans and 13 nonresidents have died with the virus.
The urgency of the ongoing surge surfaced at a Mat-Su school board meeting Wednesday night.
For the first time since the pandemic began, Alaska’s chief medical officer Dr. Anne Zink — a Mat-Su resident who’s a local middle school parent — addressed the board via a Zoom call with other top state health officials.
“This is honestly, for me, the worst point in the pandemic, where we’re at right now. I never wanted to see our hospitals where they are right now,” Zink said. “It’s not a good place, and we really need every Alaskan to help us pull forward, to protect, to protect each other ... we’re all in this together and we, unfortunately, have already had tremendous loss. But I think that’s going to get a lot worse if we don’t all do our part to slow it down.”
She recommended a multi-layered approach, including vaccination and universal indoor masking when viral transmission is high, a step several districts including Mat-Su have not taken.
Some of the new cases are breakthrough infections in vaccinated people -- about a third in July, according to a recent report. But most of the COVID-19 patients overwhelming the state’s health-care facilities are unvaccinated, providers say.
Vaccination rates increased 44% this week compared to the last week in July, state data show.
Slightly more than 55% of eligible Alaskans were fully vaccinated, the state reported Thursday. There were 61% of Alaskans with at least one dose of vaccine. Roughly 46% of eligible Kenai Peninsula residents were fully vaccinated. Slightly more than 38% of Mat-Su residents were, the lowest urban vaccination rate in the state.
The Alaska Chamber of Commerce on Thursday unveiled a series of $49,000 awards to encourage vaccinations.
