Alaska saw its highest jump in confirmed cases of COVID-19 in a single day on Friday.
State health officials reported that 29 Alaskans and five non-residents tested positive.
And, according to modeling the state is using, the rate that Alaskans are transmitting the virus is now the second highest in the nation. Only Arizona has a faster transmission rate.
Still, the state has among the fewest number of cases per capita in the country.
The number of cases has been steadily rising since the state relaxed its mandates restricting movement and commerce. State officials have consistently said they expected the number of cases to grow, but believe Alaska has the healthcare capacity to handle it.
State modeling shows that the rate of transmission of the virus has jumped up to 1.1 — that means that each Alaskan who gets sick with the virus is likely to give to more than one other person. At that level, the virus is expected to spread quickly.
The Alaskans who were reported to have tested positive on Friday are spread out all over the state. The spike in cases in recent weeks has been driven largely by clusters of cases in certain communities.
Seven of the new cases are from Anchorage and one is from Eagle River. Health officials there have been trying to contain the state’s largest outbreak at the Providence Transitional Care Center. More than 40 of the center’s patients and caregivers have tested positive for COVID-19 so far.
Six of the new cases are from the Kenai Peninsula. The virus has spread quickly there in recent weeks — there are now 73 active cases as of Friday. State health authorities said earlier this week they were monitoring hundreds of people on the Kenai — that includes people who have tested positive for the virus and their close contacts. Other clusters of cases in the area have been linked to a seafood plant in Whittier and the Tustumena state ferry.
Three of the new cases are people from Fairbanks and North Pole. Two people in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough also tested positive on Friday.
And the virus continues to spread into remote communities.
Another case from rural Alaska has been confirmed in the Nome census area. The Norton Sound Health Corporation announced Saturday that the resident is from a village in the region. The health corporation is sending out a response team to test others in the community. It is the region’s fifth case.
In Southeast Alaska, there are three new cases from Ketchikan, two from Craig, two from Sitka and two from Wrangell.
There’s also a new case in the Bethel area.
The number of new cases in Alaska from non-residents also increased by five on Friday. Those cases include a seafood worker in the Kodiak area, a person in Fairbanks, two people in the Juneau area and one in the Wrangell area.
Alaska is among more than a dozen states that, since the start of June, have recorded their highest seven-day average of new coronavirus cases, according to the Washington Post.
