See updated story from Sunday: Officials appeal to Alaskans for help as state reports 526 COVID-19 cases Sunday
Alaska has reached another milestone of the COVID-19 pandemic with a single-day new case count of 355 people. This is, by far, the highest one-day increase in cases since the pandemic started.
The majority of the 13,535 people who have tested positive for the disease in Alaska have recovered; 68 people have died.
The new cases announced Saturday are spread across at least 28 communities but most concentrated in Anchorage, which saw 165 new people test positive. In Chevak, 42 new cases were identified and in Fairbanks 27 people tested positive.
The high case counts are, in part, driven by large outbreaks in places like Chevak where health officials have reported more than 180 cases of the virus in recent days.
News of the state’s jump in new cases comes a day after the U.S. announced a record high 83,757 new cases in one day. That’s according to data from John Hopkins University.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of that data shows a shift from earlier in the pandemic when there were generally higher case counts in metropolitan areas. Now the virus is spreading in rural and remote areas of the country that had yet to be hit hard by the pandemic.
The Anchorage Daily News reported Friday that state health officials are warning about the climbing numbers of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 — and the state’s inaccurate reporting of those figures.
