COVID cases in region continue to fall

By Peter Loewi
One million Americans have died due to COVID-19. This number is roughly the same as San Jose, California, the tenth largest city in the nation. In the year 2020, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in this country, after heart disease and cancer, after having been detected in humans only in 2019.
William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told National Public Radio that “It’s shocking to me that so many people have accepted a million dead. This is not a trivial number. That’s a million human beings, and the fact that we have taken this appalling toll, and folks are so keen to move on from there – and not examine how we got there – is deeply depressing.”
In this region, six people have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Nationwide, cases have risen roughly 60 percent in the last two weeks. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services only updates their numbers once a week, but as of May 11, case rates, hospitalizations and deaths, had all risen over the previous week.
While Omicron is said to be less severe than previous variants and has led to fewer deaths for now, the way the virus manifests itself is now showing to cause unique complications for small children. Unlike the wildtype and subsequent variants, which attacked the lower respiratory system, Omicron and its subvariants attack the upper respiratory system. According to a new paper released in Pediatrics, “The relatively smaller upper respiratory tract in children compared to adults has been thought to predispose them to more severe clinical presentations resembling laryngotracheobronchitis, or croup.” The study, though still small, showed that over 80 percent of children admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital with COVID-19 had croup caused by the Omicron variant.
Similar to the millions of Americans who suffer from Long COVID, the long term complications of this croup is still unknown.
As cases risen, driven by an Omicron subvariant, the federal government is again offering free at-home tests via COVIDtests.gov. According to the website, USPS will deliver eight test kits to any household that orders tests. The White House has been pushing Congress to disperse more COVID funds for things such as testing and overseas vaccinations, but Republicans have repeatedly refused.
The week in numbers:
On Tuesday, May 10, Norton Sound Health Corporation identified one new case of COVID-19, in Unalakleet. There were five active cases in the region: two in White Mountain, one in Nome, one in Shishmaref, and one in Unalakleet.
No new cases were identified on Wednesday, May 11 or Thursday, May 12.
Over the weekend from Friday May 13 to Sunday, May 15, NSHC identified two new cases, both in Nome.
On Monday, May 16, another two cases were identified in Nome.
There are currently four known active cases of COVID-19 in the region, all in Nome.
The USA has had 82,695,491 officially reported cases of COVID-19, and 1,000,068 associated deaths.
Alaska, which only updates case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths once a week now, has had at least 247,865 cases, 3,754 hospitalizations, and 1,235 deaths. There are currently 41 people hospitalized, a steady increase over the last several weeks.
The Nome, Bering Strait and Norton Sound region has had at least 5,989 cases of COVID-19, 44 hospitalizations and six deaths.