Region has 81 active COVID cases

By Peter Loewi
Two years to the day since Norton Sound Health Corporation started the tribal leaders COVID calls, people from across the region continue to call in to learn about the latest regional COVID updates. Currently, cases continue to trend downwards, but are slightly higher than last week.
There are currently 81 active cases in the region: 58 in Nome, six in Elim, three each in Golovin, St. Michael, Stebbins, Wales, and White Mountain and one each in Savoonga and Shishmaref.
NSHC’s Medical Director Dr. Mark Peterson reported that “we have not seen any kind of big outburst of COVID related to the basketball tournament or Iditarod.”
Also on the call, Public Relations Manager Reba Lean announced a survey that the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is working on regarding vaccine hesitancy. The ANTHC Immunization Dept. received a grant to conduct a needs assessment to understand vaccine hesitancy. Lean explained that although this region has a relatively high percentage of people vaccinated, they are “still interested in learning where people get their information and what influences their choices regarding vaccines and how we can use that information to make our communications more meaningful or provide better education.”
The survey is for everyone 18 or older. If completed by April 8, participants will receive $10. The survey is available online or in the clinic, takes about 10 minutes and is confidential.
Lean said that although the last count was taken two months ago, at least 73 percent of this region is fully vaccinated, which is above both the state and national average. However, the percentage of those who have gotten their booster is much lower.
“The third dose is really, really important,” physician and infectious-disease researcher Gili Regev-Yochay, told Nature Magazine. Regev-Yochay, who works at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, recently co-authored a paper studying a fourth shot. This second booster restores antibody levels to those waned since the third shot, but provides only a small boost against protection. Both Pfizer and Moderna have asked the FDA to look at data regarding a fourth shot for the elderly and immunocompromised.
Dr. Peterson suggested that if it isn’t necessary, let’s not do it, but if it is necessary, let’s do it.
A CDC study released Friday, March 18, reports that during the Delta and Omicron waves, people who had received three shots of the mRNA vaccines were 94 percent less likely to be put on a ventilator or die due to COVID than unvaccinated patients.
As case numbers decrease in the region, state, and across the country, a subvariant of Omicron, called known as “BA2” is causing a large rebound in cases in the UK and around the world. Estimated to be 50-60 percent more contagious than the already-extremely-contagious Omicron variant, BA2 does not appear to be more harmful.
White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci says he expects an uptick of cases, but not necessarily a surge, such as with past variants. When the genomic sequence graph was last updated by DHSS on February 20, 2022, BA2 made up 43 percent of all cases in Alaska.
Dr. Peterson stressed that this does not change any of the guidance thus far, and what we know works still works.
The week in numbers:
On Tuesday, March 15, NSHC identified 31 COVID-19 cases. There were 13 in Nome, 11 in Golovin, two in Stebbins, and one in each Brevig, Elim, St. Michael, Teller and White Mountain.
That led to 75 active cases in the region: 44 in Nome, 13 in Golovin, six in Teller, five in St. Michael, three in Stebbins, two in Brevig, and one in each Elim and White Mountain.
On Thursday, March 17, NSHC identified 11 COVID-19 cases in the region. There were 10 new cases in Nome and one in Brevig Mission. This brought the number of active cases to 76: 41 in Nome, 12 in Golovin, eight in Elim, four in Teller, three in St. Michael, three in Stebbins, two in Savoonga and one each in Brevig, Wales and White Mountain.
Over the weekend from Friday, March 18 to Sunday, March 20, NSHC identified 48 cases of COVID-19: 32 in Nome, four in St. Michael, three in Elim, three in Golovin, three in Stebbins, and one each in Teller, Wales, and Shishmaref.
As usual over the weekend, active cases dropped, this time to 65: 44 in Nome, six in Elim, four in St. Michael, three in Golovin, three in Stebbins, two in Savoonga, and one each in Shishmaref, Teller and Wales.
On Monday, March 21, NSHC identified 36 COVID-19 cases in the region. 24 in Nome, five in Elim, three in White Mountain, two in Wales, and one each in Golovin and Savoonga.
Since March, 2020, the United States has reported 79,778,889 cases of COVID-19 and 972,634 COVID-associated deaths.
In the same time, Alaska has seen at least 237,325 cases, 3,714 hospitalizations and 1,169 deaths. There are currently 45 people hospitalized as a result of COVID-19, with three patients on ventilators.
The Nome, Bering Strait and Norton Sound region has had at least 5,547 cases, 42 hospitalizations and five deaths.