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 Governor Mike Dunleavy and health officials announced the move as
the tally of newly confirmed cases statewide reached another
single-day record of 1,224 patients amid a wave of infections driven
by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant among the
unvaccinated.
The Delta variant is “crippling our healthcare system. It’s
impacting everything from heart attacks to strokes to our children
if they get in a bike accident,” Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief
medical officer, said at a news conference with Dunleavy.
Idaho, another one of several largely rural states where COVID-19
cases have overwhelmed healthcare systems in recent weeks, activated
its own crisis-care standards statewide last Thursday, citing a
spike in hospitalizations that "has exhausted existing resources."
Alaska’s health and social services commissioner, Adam Crum,
announced that he signed an emergency addendum extending to the
whole state standards of crisis care announced last week at the
state’s largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in
Anchorage.
The new document limits liability faced by providers for
crisis-level medical care in all Alaska hospitals.
Moreover, it acknowledges the realities of rationed care statewide,
with scarce medical supplies and staff prioritized in a way that
denies normal levels of care to some patients for the sake of
others, depending on how sick they are and their chances for
recovery.
Some critically ill patients, for example, have had to be treated
outside intensive care units where they would typically be admitted,
Zink said.
“Care has shifted in Alaska’s hospitals. The same standard of care
that was previously there is no longer able to be given on a regular
basis. This has been happening for weeks,” Zink told reporters.
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 To cope with the COVID-19
influx, Alaska has signed an $87 million
contract to enlist hundreds of healthcare
workers from out of state, officials said.
About one-fifth of Alaska hospital patients are
infected with COVID-19, according to state data.
But that figure understates the burden placed on
the system as a whole as it "squeezes out"
capacity to treat victims of car accidents,
strokes, heart attacks and other ailments,
Dunleavy said. Paradoxically,
back in April, Alaska had ranked among the top states getting
COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of residents, helped in large part
by efforts of the state's pandemic-conscious indigenous population.
Alaska has since slipped below the national average, with just 58%
of residents aged 12 and older fully vaccinated, according to the
state database. The vaccination slump coincided with significant
political resistance to public health requirements.
In May, voters in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, elected a new
mayor, Dave Bronson, who campaigned against health mandates and has
repeatedly expressed his refusal to get vaccinated. Dunleavy has
opposed any vaccine mandates.
At Wednesday's news conference, the Republican governor defended his
positions, citing Alaska's third-lowest rate of COVID-19 deaths in
the nation per capita.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage, Alaska; Editing by Steve
Gorman and Christopher Cushing)
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