New COVID-19 treatments and vaccines are on the horizon nationwide, and for Alaska.
The two leading COVID-19 vaccines could hit the state next month. And monoclonal antibody infusions — a treatment received by President Donald Trump when he was hospitalized with COVID-19 — have already arrived in small numbers.
But health-care providers face unique challenges in distributing those medicines across Alaska, with its hundreds of communities that lack road access and hospitals.
The antibody treatments have been shown to reduce hospitalizations among at-risk patients. But they’re given through an IV and similar drugs can set off rashes or even anaphylactic shock, so they’re typically delivered in treatment centers where patients can be monitored and access higher levels of care if needed — very different environments than the remote clinics in many Alaska villages.
By Monday, the number had grown to 110 positive inmates, according to DOC spokeswoman Sarah Gallagher. As of Monday, the prison, an hour west of Wasilla near Point McKenzie, housed a total of 1,317 pretrial and sentenced prisoners
.On Saturday, 676 people tested positive for the disease, and on Sunday, another 523. Officials say those numbers underestimate true case counts by up to 50% because there is not enough staff to enter all of the positive cases into the state database.
At least 101 people have died of COVID-19 in the state. That count does not include an inmate at the Goose Creek Correctional Center at Point MacKenzie who died of COVID-19 on Sunday morning. The 69-year-old is the first inmate in the state to die of COVID-19, according to the Department of Corrections. He was transported from Goose Creek to an Anchorage hospital two days before his death. The coronavirus outbreak at Goose Creek has infected more than 200 people at last count
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