Print article Carla Helfferich, an Alaskan since statehood, exhausted her ample supply of profanity when she tried to call the state’s COVID-19 hotline during the rocky senior vaccine rollout earlier this month. Helfferich, a Fairbanks resident over 65, was eligible to schedule an appointment. But she didn’t know where to start. So she called the state hotline. Over and over. Helfferich did get an appointment, but only after hearing a rumor about availability. She never got through on the state number. “I found the situation stunningly bizarre,” she said. It comes too late for Helfferich and thousands of seniors who maxed out the hotline earlier this month. But as of this week, people with COVID-19 questions now get to talk to a person. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services announced the change this week: Callers will either get immediately connected with someone or be put on hold until someone is available.
Print article Back in November, with COVID-19 cases surging and the state’s contact tracing corps overwhelmed, officials implored people testing positive to reach out on their own to the people they might have infected. But, now Alaska’s contact tracing effort is rebounding after several months of hiring and several weeks of decreased daily cases. At the moment, once contact tracers are notified of the new positive, they’ll reach out within the day, said
Tim Struna, who heads up the section of public health nursing for Alaska.
It takes on average statewide around three days between the time someone might pull into a drive-through testing site and get their nose swabbed to when a contact tracer calls them.
Print article Numerous industry sectors and groups, including teachers, are urging state officials to move up their eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine even as it became clear Alaska’s allocation for the month is all but used up. During a hearing Monday, several educators and the president of the Anchorage teachers union urged the state’s vaccine allocation committee to move teachers into “immediate” vaccine status before in-person learning begins for K-2 and special education classes through sixth grade at the Anchorage School District in about a week. Representatives of the state’s trucking and shipping industries asked to be bumped up as well. Warehousemen and truck drivers in the Lower 48 are seeing 20% to 25% workforce reductions due to the effects of the virus, Matson vice president Bal Dreyfus told the committee during the hearing, held remotely via Zoom.