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The hospital is reporting record high admissions of coronavirus disease – even more than the surge last November. About 18% of the admissions at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital have COVID-19.
Dr. Barbara Creighton, who has been attending many of them, says the surge is preventable.
“There is the disconnect. You know, we have businesses opening, school buses flying, restaurants going, and we have visitors happening, and yet we have our highest case rates. And so, we are like does anybody see this? This place is on fire with COVID.”
Dr. Barbara Creighton reports to the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation Board about patients she is tending on the COVID floor.
With local virus transmissions rising exponentially, Fairbanks Memorial Hospital is reporting record-high admissions of Covid patients who tend to be younger and sometimes angrier than at the beginning of the pandemic, health officials said Friday.
Foundation Health Partners leaders provided a Covid-19 update, pointing out the record-high admission rate at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital and describing changes in patient demographics.
Averaging at 10 and 11 new Covid patients per day this past week, the hospital had 12 Covid-19 patients on Friday and two more who were suspected to have the virus, said FHP Chief Medical Officer Dr. Angelique Ramirez.
âWe are really struggling right now; we have a record-high number of patients in the hospital,â Shelley Ebenal, FHP CEO and quality medical director, said.
A nurse at the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center in Fairbanks, Alaska.Credit.Nathan Howard/Reuters
May 2, 2021, 9:49 a.m. ET
Dr. Angelique Ramirez, the chief medical officer of the main health care system in Fairbanks, Alaska, started the monthly coronavirus briefing in April by saying that she thought Marchâs meeting would be the last. But amid a new surge of cases in the state, one of the countryâs worst surges, Dr. Ramirez was blunt about her past assessment.
âI was wrong,â she said.
With nearly 100,000 people, the Fairbanks metropolitan area is Alaskaâs second largest and the largest in the stateâs vast interior. According to a New York Times database, the number of new coronavirus cases in the borough of which Fairbanks is the seat, North Star, has risen by 253 percent over the past two weeks. The positivity rate has doubled since March, to about 10 percent from 5 percent, and hospitalizations at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, the areaâs only
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2:56
The detailed number for the borough budget is $173,496,346. And will require taxpayers to pay $13.799 for every $100,000 in value of their property. That mill rate is just under 1% less (down .092 mills) from last year.
Ward says he was able to check several boxes with the spending plan, including keeping it $6,594,684 under the voter approved tax revenue cap, and he put 10% of tax revenue, $12,006,660, in the Capital Improvement and Maintenance Reserve. The biggest expense in the budget is the contribution to the school district, and there is no change from last year.
He also balanced the budget but only with leftover money from last year. $5,643,294 went unspent.