By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
As local, state, and national coronavirus cases continue to climb, Alaska’s chief medical officer stressed the importance of vaccinations and other virus mitigations Tuesday via teleconference at a meeting of the Assembly.
The key to emerging from the pandemic is vaccination, Dr. Anne Zink told the Assembly.
“Our ticket out of this pandemic is vaccination. And while it’s not perfect, it is our strongest and best tool,” Zink said.
While vaccines have been widely available in the United States for months, the virus continues to mutate and in some cases infect vaccinated individuals, Zink said, increasing the need to maintain precautions such as masking, distancing, and testing.
“We remember how to do this and we can do it again. If someone is positive for COVID-19, regardless of if they are vaccinated or not, they need to isolate for at least ten days until their symptoms are improving and they have had no fever for 24 hours,” Zink said. “If you’ve been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and have no symptoms, someone who is unvaccinated needs to quarantine for a minimum of seven days and a test.”
With the more contagious Delta variant spreading, Zink noted that even vaccinated people should take measures after being exposed, though quarantine is unnecessary.
“If they have been vaccinated, then really monitor those symptoms closely for 14 days, no quarantine required and, as mentioned, now consider a test midway through that monitoring period,” she said. “If you have COVID-19 exposure and you have symptoms, the biggest thing here is please don’t be around others when you are sick in general… Remembering that testing can be a useful tool.”
Referring to the Ketchikan Bill Weiss Wrestling Tournament, which drove a sizable outbreak across Southeast this spring, Zink again stressed the need for testing.
“Making sure that they’re testing prior to, you know, the wrestling tournament. So you can have kids wrestle without worrying about if they’ll get COVID,” she said.
The doctor also addressed breakthrough cases, in which a vaccinated person tests positive for the virus.
“We have seen more breakthrough cases with the Delta variant and higher viral loads with the Delta variant. And that’s part of the reason the CDC made the recommendation (Tuesday) that while the public are in indoor spaces with others, regardless of their vaccine status, they consider masking,” she said.
But she added that breakthrough cases don’t indicate a failure of the vaccine.
“How come we’re seeing so many vaccine breakthrough cases? How come half the cases that we see are in vaccinated people?... If you had a vaccine rate of 83 percent and had to go through the population... if you look at how these vaccines work, you could easily have 50 percent of individuals who had COVID had been vaccinated,” she said. “But if you look at the population of vaccinated versus unvaccinated, that denominator matters. When you have more people that are vaccinated you’re going to have more breakthrough cases. Not because the vaccine is failing in any way, just because you have more people who are in that pile. And you see that again and again.”
However, even with the Delta variant, vaccines remain effective at reducing the likelihood of severe illness and death, she noted.
“With the Alpha variant or wild type variant, if a vaccinated person got COVID-19 and they tried to actually sequence and get the virus, they didn’t get much virus, or really low viral loads. But with the Delta variant, even vaccinated individuals can still get it. What we see is the vaccine does an amazing job helping to prevent severe disease and death associated with COVID-19,” she said.
Earlier in the pandemic, Zink said, Sitka was a model because of the town’s rapid vaccination campaign.
“You were first out of the gate for a high percentage of vaccinated residents. You guys were the community to chase for quite a while. I got a lot of, ‘How is Sitka doing so well?’” she recalled. But this week, Sitka’s daily case average topped 20. Of Alaskan COVID cases since January, she said, 19 out of 20 of those hospitalized were unvaccinated. Of those who have died of COVID in the state this year, a full 98 percent were unvaccinated.
With the pandemic still on the move, Zink also underscored the need for more testing.
“I think of testing kind of like the headlights in your car in the middle of winter. It gives us a sense of where we’re at and where we’re going,” she said. “It can be an early indicator of where the state is, as well as the community. And it’s really that anyone who has symptoms gets tested… (Virus positivity in testing has) increased to 12 percent… really suggesting that more testing would be helpful to identify cases early so people can isolate if they truly are infected and minimize their spread to others. So I really encourage people to consider testing if they’ve been in close contact with someone with COVID-19 or if they have any symptoms, regardless of their vaccine status.”
In the early stages of the pandemic, Sitka avoided a large spike of cases. Zink noted that Sitka’s virus trend hasn’t always followed national norms, though this summer’s surge is in line with national trends.
“The good thing about having a surge later in the pandemic, well, number one, there’s vaccines. So you have more of your population protected from the virus, more testing available, more treatment options like monoclonal antibodies, just more understanding and awareness of the disease than what happened early on,” she said.
Delta is behind the recent uptick in cases.
“Delta is the driver. Over 80 percent of our last run in our cases that we were able to sequence were the Delta variant. Just this week alone we had 137 new Delta variant cases. The Delta variant transmits about twice as fast as the Alpha, which is about twice as fast as the wild type,” Zink told the Assembly.
Hospitals also have seen a recent increase in young patients.
“They’re seeing younger patients as well as unvaccinated patients. And unfortunately the Anchorage hospitals are very overwhelmed right now and have been on divert for some time,” she said.
As the summer wears on and schools plan to reopen in August, Zink said her primary goal is to ensure Alaskans’ good health – particularly so that children can return to their classrooms in the fall.
“We just want to make sure that Alaskans are healthy and well and kids are in school and businesses are open and cruise ships come and we all get to enjoy the wonderful things that we love about Alaska in summer. But healthy people are needed for that,” she said.
Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz seconded this.
“You hit it exactly. What we need are our kids in school; that’s coming up faster than any of us recognize,” he said.
Replying to a similar comment on the reopening of schools from Assembly member Rebecca Himschoot, Zink emphasized the importance of vaccinating adults so that children too young to receive the vaccine are kept safe.
“It’s upon all of us as adults to put them in the center and to get vaccinated so we can protect them. And adults are more likely to spread it to kids than kids are to the adults. So there’s even more reason to have our adults protected,” Zink said.
Commenting on the city’s virus dashboard, Assembly member Thor Christianson said he hopes the vaccination status of those listed will be published again. He said that the information was pulled from the dashboard at the request of the state.
“I can’t think of a legal or ethical reason not to publish the vaccine status,” Christianson said. “I think it’s useful to show that the vast majority of our cases are unvaccinated.”
Zink replied that she takes no issue with a city’s publishing the vaccination status of local cases.
“We try to do that summary info in our bulletin. We didn’t know, and honestly couldn’t care less if you guys have your own data and you are sharing it in any way you want. We believe in transparent, timely data… We just want to make sure that the data that is shared is timely and accurate, and we struggle with that,” she said.
Assembly member Kevin Knox asked Zink about the recent rise in hospitalization of young people with the coronavirus.
Zink noted this, and added that while younger people are suffering from COVID in larger numbers than before, debate is still ongoing regarding the morbidity of the Delta variant.
“We’re seeing more in the 20s to 40s range, 20s to 50s range, versus before it was more like 50s to 60s range, so we’re seeing a younger population,” she said. “Unfortunately with the younger population, they have healthy bodies going in for the most part and they can be in the hospital for longer… There is also a big debate kind of raging of is the Delta variant more lethal? Does it have higher morbidity associated with it?”
When thinking about the health of the population in general, she added, viral transmissibility concerns her more than does individual morbidity.
“This is a virus that is transmitting more easily from person to person. And nationally and as a world, we’re kind of done with COVID,” the doctor said. “And so we’ve kind of let down a lot of our mitigation strategies and probably for very good reasons. But as a result it’s resulting in more COVID spreading. So when I’m thinking of population health, I actually worry more about the virus transmitting from person to person more than I worry about how sick it makes any one individual. Because we will have more people hospitalized and more people die with a virus that transmits really easily.”
Sitkans interested in the vaccine can find more information at covid19.searhc.org. The website also includes a link to sign up for vaccination.
