Tracking COVID-19 in Alaska: 39 new cases reported Monday, no new deaths

By Anchorage Daily News

Updated: September 1, 2020 Published: August 31, 2020

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The state on Monday reported 39 new cases of COVID-19, most of them in Anchorage residents.

Separately, the Arctic Slope Native Association also reported five new cases on the North Slope, four of them residents and one traveler. Three of the new cases are Utqiagvik residents, one is a resident of a smaller North Slope community, and one is a nonresident traveler who is remaining in Utqiagvik until cleared to return to their home off the Slope.

The North Slope Borough has confirmed 40 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic in March.

As of Monday, 37 people around the state were hospitalized with COVID-19 while two hospital patients were awaiting test results, according to the state’s coronavirus data dashboard. Of Alaska’s 153 intensive unit beds, used for the sickest patients, 85 were available on Monday.

No new deaths were reported by the state health department on Monday. A total of 37 Alaskans with COVID-19 have died since March.

Active cases of COVID-19 among Alaska residents rose from 3,135 on Sunday to 3,182 on Monday. There were an additional 668 active cases among nonresidents by Monday.

In total, 862 nonresidents and 5,263 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since March.

Of the new cases, it wasn’t clear how many patients were showing symptoms of the virus when they tested positive.

The low number of cases announced Monday in Anchorage occurred at the tail of a four-week “reset” which shuttered restaurants and bars to indoor dining in order to curb high case counts and protect health care capacity. As of Monday, restaurants and bars in Anchorage can now open to indoor dining at half capacity, with other restrictions.

Of the new resident cases, 29 were in Anchorage, four were in Fairbanks, one was in North Pole, two were in the Nome Census Area, and one was in Juneau.

Two nonresidents — one in Anchorage and one in Bethel — also tested positive.

The state’s testing positivity rate as of Monday was 1.82% over a seven-day rolling average.

— Annie Berman and Zaz Hollander