Alaska COVID-19 Case Count Summary: March 2, 2021

CASE COUNT SUMMARY, Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Reporting data for 12 a.m. - 11:59 p.m. March 1

DHSS today announced two deaths of Alaska residents and 159 new people identified with COVID-19 in Alaska. 124 were residents in: Anchorage (39), Wasilla (25), Fairbanks (10), Palmer (10), Kusilvak Census Area (8), Bethel Census Area (7), Petersburg (6), Sitka (3), Chugiak (2), North Pole (2), and one each in Cordova, Dillingham, Homer, Juneau, Kenai, Ketchikan, Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Soldotna, Sutton-Alpine, Tok, Utqiaġvik and Yakutat plus Hoonah-Angoon.

35 new nonresident cases were identified yesterday in:

• Unalaska: 34 in seafood industry
• Aleutians East Borough: one in seafood industry

35 resident cases were subtracted from and 32 nonresident cases were added to the dashboard due to data verification procedures, bringing the total number of Alaska resident cases to 56,428 and the total number of nonresident cases to 2,409.

ALERT LEVELS – The current statewide alert level, based on the average daily case rate over 14 days per 100,000, is high at 16.29 cases per 100,000. Most regions of Alaska are in high alert status with widespread community transmission. Two regions are at intermediate alert status with moderate transmission and two regions are at low alert with minimal transmission.

High (>10 cases/100,000)

• Matanuska-Susitna Region: 36.88 cases per 100,000
• Other Southeast Region - Northern: 29.4 cases per 100,000
• YK-Delta Region: 25.59 cases per 100,000
• Other Interior Region: 17.21 cases per 100,000
• Other Southeast Region - Southern: 16.98 cases per 100,000
• Fairbanks North Star Borough: 14.7 cases per 100,000
• Anchorage Municipality: 12.73 cases per 100,000

Intermediate (>4.8-10 cases/100,000)

• Juneau City and Borough: 8.32 cases per 100,000
• Kenai Peninsula Borough: 5.45 cases per 100,000

Low (0-4.8 cases/100,000)

• Southwest Region: 4.54 cases per 100,000
• Northwest Region: 3.69 cases per 100,000

CASES: HOSPITALIZATIONS & DEATHS – There have been a total of 1,246 hospitalizations and 299 deaths, with six new hospitalizations and two new deaths reported yesterday. Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the individuals who died.

Both deaths were identified through death certificate review:

• A female Anchorage resident 80 years or older
• A male Wasilla resident in his 60s died out of state

There are currently 23 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who are hospitalized and three additional patients who are considered persons under investigation (PUI) for a total of 26 current COVID-related hospitalizations. Six of these patients are on ventilators. The percentage of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is 2.5%.

TESTING – A total of 1,704,660 tests have been conducted, with 32,389 tests conducted in the previous seven days. The average percentage of daily positive tests for the previous seven days is 2.25%.

VACCINATIONS – Reported to date, there have been 157,023 people who have received at least one dose and 104,349 people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for a total of 260,616 doses administered in Alaska. For more information, visit covidvax.alaska.gov.

TAKE ACTION – Vaccines are being distributed throughout Alaska but we all still need to maintain our COVID-19 protective measures to keep ourselves and others safe and healthy: coronavirus.dhss.alaska.gov.

Notes: Reports are received electronically, by phone and by fax. Cases are verified, redundancies are eliminated and then cases are entered into the data system that feeds into Alaska’s Coronavirus Response Hub. When there is a high number of reports being received, this may cause delays in getting reports entered and counted. Personnel continue to focus on the effort to process and count reports and minimize the delay from receipt to posting on the hub.

There is a lag between cases being reported on the DHSS data dashboard and what local communities report. Each case is an individual person even if they are tested multiple times. Total tests are a not a count of unique individuals tested and includes both positive and negative results. The current number of hospitalized patients represents more real-time data compared to the cumulative total hospitalizations. Current hospitalizations are reported for all facilities, not just general acute care and critical access facilities, as is the default on the dashboard. Total number of hospital beds available fluctuate daily as the number of available hospital staff changes. All data reported in real-time, on a daily basis, should be considered preliminary and subject to change. To view more data visit data.coronavirus.alaska.gov; weekly and daily case summaries are archived at dhss.alaska.gov/dph/Epi/id/Pages/COVID-19/communications.aspx#updates.