{"id":461087,"date":"2025-12-21T00:14:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/461087\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T00:14:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:14:22","slug":"1-in-500-alaskans-died-from-covid-19-during-pandemic-state-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/461087\/","title":{"rendered":"1 in 500 Alaskans died from COVID-19 during pandemic, state reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Signs outside the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage, photographed on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Over a roughly three-year period beginning in March 2020, 1,564 Alaskans died from COVID-19.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a new report from the Alaska Department of Health, which provides a detailed review of data on how the state fared dealing with the coronavirus between March 2020 and the end of the the federal public health emergency in May 2023. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis report … represents the first comprehensive, retrospective analysis that brings together epidemiological data across the full course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Alaska,\u201d Department of Health spokesperson Shirley Sakaye wrote in an emailed response to questions. \u201cWhile the pandemic\u2019s impacts extended far beyond what can be captured in an epidemiological summary, this report provides a consolidated, data-driven account of Alaska\u2019s COVID-19 experience.\u201d <\/p>\n

Epidemiologists looked at death records, hospitalizations, demographics, infections, vaccination rates and public health responses, producing an analysis that evaluates the different phases that played out as Alaska weathered the pandemic. <\/p>\n

The 1,564 COVID deaths equates to 1 in every 500 Alaska residents during the period of review, they concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeventy-four percent of those who died and were eligible for COVID-19 vaccine had opted not to receive it\u201a” states the report<\/a>, published earlier in December by the state\u2019s Section of Epidemiology. <\/p>\n

The report provides a chronological review of how the virus impacted Alaska, broken down into seven distinct phases determined by developments in the public health response and viral mutations. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver time, it became clear that simply aggregating numbers across multiple years did not adequately reflect the reality of the pandemic, because the context was continually changing,\u201d Sakaye wrote of the impetus for the analysis. \u201cTo better capture that complexity, the report organizes Alaska\u2019s experience into distinct pandemic \u2018eras.\u2019 This approach more accurately reflects how conditions, risks and public health responses shifted over time. One of the key takeaways is that a pandemic is not a single event, but an extended and evolving experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A sign taped to the front door of The Kobuk on W. Fifth Avenue in downtown Anchorage asks patrons to wear a face mask while in their store on Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s former chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, who helmed the state\u2019s response to the coronavirus, said the report is valuable for public health officials and policymakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really for the future,\u201d said Zink, who no longer works for the state. During the pandemic, she said, she regularly consulted old epidemiological reports on Alaska\u2019s response to previous epidemics like influenza, which informed public health measures to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Zink did not author the new coronavirus report but did review it and provide feedback. She said she <\/b>found the delineation between phases to be particularly useful. <\/p>\n

The first era, for example, was the \u201cpandemic onset,\u201d from March until May 2020, a time when the state saw a low number of cases and people were still largely obeying government public health orders such as business closures, physical distancing and limited travel.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlaska\u2019s geographic location and the implementation of (non-pharmaceutical interventions) prior to the first detected case prevented widespread community transmission. This resulted in a smaller initial COVID-19 wave and lower rates of morbidity and mortality compared to many areas in the contiguous U.S. for the same period,\u201d wrote report author Katherine Newell with the Alaska Section of Epidemiology, who no longer works for the state. <\/p>\n

Alaska started seeing more infections in the summer of 2020, as prevention measures started to be relaxed in some jurisdictions. The state and its health care partners were aggressive about virus testing for critical infrastructure employees, travelers and the public. By August of that year, Alaska was \u201cthe most tested state (per capita) in the nation,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

\"\"Avii Mafuao receives a COVID-19 test at a drive-through testing site at 4810 C Street in Anchorage on Jan. 8, 2022. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Later eras are defined by rising levels of viral transmission and hospitalization, the arrival of effective vaccines and subsequent waves of coronavirus variants that pushed Alaska\u2019s health care system close to collapse. <\/p>\n

Two points of interest highlighted in the report are the disproportionately high toll the disease inflicted on particular groups of Alaskans, and the severity of the delta variant, which caused almost half of the state\u2019s total COVID-19 deaths within a six-month period between July and December 2021. <\/p>\n

\u201cDespite these increases in statewide testing and contact tracing capacity, COVID-19 community transmission continued to increase during this era, resulting in Alaska\u2019s first notable surge in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths,\u201d the report continues. <\/p>\n

Many of of those outbreaks spread through congregate settings like \u201cseafood processing plants, correctional facilities, long-term care and assisted living facilities, and healthcare institutions.\u201d <\/p>\n

As the virus spread, it hospitalized and killed two groups at a particularly high rate: \u201cAmerican Indian\/Alaska Native persons, and Asian\/Pacific Islander persons,\u201d <\/b>according to the report\u2019s review of state demographic data in death and hospitalization records. <\/p>\n

Prior to the arrival of widespread vaccination in January 2021, the disparities in health outcomes grew large. <\/p>\n

\u201cMortality rates among AI\/AN and Asian\/PI persons were 5.5 and 3.6 times as high as the rate among White persons,\u201d the report states. \u201cThese racial disparities in both COVID-19 mortality and hospitalizations continued for the entirety of the pandemic in Alaska.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Angel Libby prepares to administer a COVID-19 test at the drive-through testing site at 4810 C Street in Anchorage on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Zink said she wished there had been more demographic nuance in reporting the results. Even though Asians and Pacific Islanders are assessed as part of the same group, the Pacific Islander community in Alaska fared far worse, she said. <\/p>\n

The report does not explain the reasons for the disparities. Zink said many of the patterns that played out from the coronavirus mirror trends from other diseases that have spread through Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlaska Natives have worse health outcomes,\u201d Zink said, offering several socioeconomic factors that likely play a role, including household overcrowding, lack of water and sewer infrastructure in many communities, and inconsistent access to emergency medical care.<\/p>\n

But, she added, much about the coronavirus\u2019s transmissibility and pathology is still being studied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to pretend we know what we don\u2019t know,\u201d Zink said.<\/p>\n

Delta devastation<\/p>\n

Once vaccines arrived, Alaska vaccinated early and rapidly. At least at first. In a five-month period, 289,287 Alaskans got their primary vaccine dose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis marked the largest state vaccination campaign ever undertaken,\u201d the report states. <\/p>\n

By July of 2021, though, the delta variant had become the dominant coronavirus strain in Alaska, and it devastated many communities<\/a>. By the end of the year, 719 people died of COVID-19, 46% of the total killed during all three years of the pandemic in Alaska. <\/p>\n

\"\"Nurse Bethany Zimpelman prepares to administer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to children during a vaccine clinic at Tikahtnu Commons in Anchorage on Nov. 3, 2021. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

The virus was the \u201cleading cause of death in Alaska during this era,\u201d more lethal than cancer, heart disease or other common killers. Those who died were overwhelmingly older: The median age of death during the delta era was 75. They were also overwhelmingly unvaccinated: 80% of those who died, 575 people, \u201cwere unvaccinated against COVID-19 at the time of their death,\u201d according to the report. <\/p>\n

In that same six-month period, 2,021 Alaskans were hospitalized because of COVID-19, putting \u201cunprecedented strain on staff and bed capacity\u201d at hospitals around the state, and prompting officials to coordinate bringing more than 400 health care workers up from outside to assist. <\/p>\n

When the omicron variant replaced delta as the dominant strain, it proved far more transmissible, but less potent. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased, but hospitalizations and death rates declined. <\/p>\n

\"\"Nurses Crista Johnson, left, and Jeremiah Hassemer prepared monoclonal antibody treatments before the clinic opened at Tikahtnu Commons in East Anchorage on Sept. 24, 2021. (Marc Lester \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

The data included in the report\u2019s analysis has limits, particularly when it comes to the efficacy of certain public health measures, and the disease\u2019s relationship with other lethal health factors. The author steers away from attributing COVID-19 deaths that might have technically been caused by factors like heart disease, underlying conditions or drug overdoses, but were exacerbated by pandemic conditions like social isolation or restricted health care access. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese excess deaths reflect the broader consequences of the pandemic on the public\u2019s health. Further research is necessary to fully understand the factors driving excess mortality and the broader public health impact of the pandemic in Alaska,\u201d the report states. <\/p>\n

Fully vaccinated Alaskans still got sick with COVID-19 and some, particularly those who were older or in poor health, still succumbed to the disease. But one of the repeated conclusions in the analysis is that the state\u2019s early vaccine uptake helped protect residents during the later waves of highly transmissible variants.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the significant difference in age-adjusted mortality rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons, high vaccine uptake during this era likely saved numerous lives in Alaska,\u201d the report notes. <\/p>\n

[Correction:<\/b> This story and headline have been updated to clarify that 1 in 500 Alaskans died from COVID-19 during pandemic, not that 1 in 500 Alaskan deaths during pandemic was from COVID-19.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signs outside the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage, photographed on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. (Emily Mesner \/ ADN)…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":461088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[7823,210,20519,7825,67,132,68,16945,3159],"class_list":{"0":"post-461087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-covid","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-january","11":"tag-pandemic","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-vaccine","16":"tag-winter"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115754675199093523","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}