COVID-19 cases rise again in the Mat-Su, but so do vaccinations

After a week of slower growth in COVID-19 cases, Alaska’s numbers are on the rise again, with just under a thousand cases reported Wednesday.  That includes almost 200 in the Mat-Su, which was second only to Anchorage in terms of new reports of COVID-19.

The state’s hospital system remains strained as well, with only about twenty adult intensive care beds available statewide.  About eighty percent of the total beds are occupied in state hospitals.  Across Alaska, about one in five people in the hospital have COVID-19, but in the Mat-Su the percentage is more than double that.

Vaccination rates in the borough are beginning to rise again after a long plateau through the summer.  As of Thursday, just over forty-seven percent of eligible Mat-Su residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, about 250 hospitalizations and eighty-three deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in the Mat-Su.