Alaska COVID-19 Case Count Summary: March 3, 2021

CASE COUNT SUMMARY, Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Reporting data for 12 a.m. - 11:59 p.m. March 2

DHSS today announced one death of a nonresident and 189 new people identified with COVID-19 in Alaska. 173 were residents in: Anchorage (47), Wasilla (35), Fairbanks (18), Palmer (15), Petersburg (13), Bethel Census Area (9), Juneau (5), Chugiak (3), Eagle River (3), Homer (3), Bethel (2), Cordova (2), Delta Junction (2), Kenai Peninsula Borough North (2), Ketchikan (2), North Pole (2), and one each in Big Lake, Dillingham, Girdwood, Kenai, Kusilvak Census Area, Metlakatla, Sitka, Soldotna, Sutton-Alpine and Willow.

Sixteen new nonresident cases were identified yesterday in:

• Unalaska: 13 in seafood industry, one with purpose under investigation
• Anchorage: one with purpose under investigation
• Southeast Fairbanks Census Area: one in mining industry

Four resident cases were added to the dashboard due to data verification procedures, bringing the total number of Alaska resident cases to 56,605 and the total number of nonresident cases to 2,425.

ALERT LEVELS – The current statewide alert level, based on the average daily case rate over 14 days per 100,000, is high at 17.71 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: 39.54 cases per 100,000
• Other Southeast Region - Northern: 33.95 cases per 100,000
• YK-Delta Region: 28.9 cases per 100,000
• Other Southeast Region - Southern: 18.07 cases per 100,000
• Other Interior Region: 17.52 cases per 100,000
• Fairbanks North Star Borough: 15.88 cases per 100,000
• Anchorage Municipality: 13.94 cases per 100,000

Intermediate (>4.8-10 cases/100,000)

• Juneau City and Borough: 9.44 cases per 100,000
• Kenai Peninsula Borough: 6.18 cases per 100,000

Low (0-4.8 cases/100,000)

• Southwest Region: 4.81 cases per 100,000
• Northwest Region: 3.42 cases per 100,000

CASES: HOSPITALIZATIONS & DEATHS – There have been a total of 1,245 hospitalizations and 299 deaths, with no new hospitalizations or deaths of Alaska residents reported yesterday. One hospitalization was removed from the dashboard due to data verification procedures.

One new death of a nonresident in Alaska was reported yesterday:

• Aleutians East Borough: a male nonresident in his 70s in the seafood industry

Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the individual who died.

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. Two of these patients are on ventilators. The percentage of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is 2.4%.

TESTING – A total of 1,711,018 tests have been conducted, with 29,812 tests conducted in the previous seven days. The average percentage of daily positive tests for the previous seven days is 2.44%.

VACCINATIONS – Reported to date, there have been 158,680 people who have received at least one dose and 106,006 people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for a total of 263,930 doses administered in Alaska. For more information, visit covidvax.alaska.gov.

ALASKA PIONEER HOMES UPDATE – Since the last update on Feb. 23, one resident at the Fairbanks Pioneer Home has tested positive for COVID-19 during routine home-wide testing. The resident had been fully vaccinated and tested negative multiple times in the last month. The home is conducting contact tracing, testing everyone twice a week and, due to the positive case, will delay the start of visitations until the week of March 15. None of the other five Pioneer Homes have any cases and are currently doing in-person visits.

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.