Sleds, snowmobiles and planes: How COVID-19 vaccines are distributed in rural Alaska
Far beyond the reaches of the nearest connecting roads, villages of rural Alaska are only accessible by small aircraft or boat. But there are few latitudes too challenging for frontline workers like Dr. Katrine Bengaard, who are working to distribute the coronavirus vaccines to state residents. People in rural Alaska are vulnerable just like anybody in rural America, Bengaard told CBS News Nancy Chen.
Bengaard and her team from the Maniilaq Association cover northwest Alaska, traveling hundreds of miles a day, including on sleds pulled by snowmobiles. One of her latest coronavirus vaccine runs required her to take a plane.
BETHEL (AP) â Residents of an Alaska village met with health officials and government agencies to consider methods to restore running water after a fire destroyed the community s water plant.
The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation has provided bottled water and hand sanitizer to residents of Tuluksak since the community s water plant and laundromat burned Jan. 16.
Alaska State Troopers said the fire burned as residents of the Alaska Native community northeast of Bethel unsuccessfully tried to douse the flames with water hauled from the Tuluksak River.
Health corporation President Dan Winkelman said in a statement that everything possible will be done to help restore Tuluksak s water service.
Credit Katie Basile / KYUK
The Lower Kuskokwim School District school board will be meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 27, for the first time this semester.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation will report on the COVID-19 situation in the region. On Jan. 13, YKHC sent an advisory to school districts saying that it would only recommend some in-person classes when all COVID-19 cases in a community could be linked to travel. The health corporation said that it would also need to see very low case rates and test positivity rates before it would recommend students return to school.
An online petition requesting that LKSD immediately return to in-person classes in Bethel for two days of the week is circulating on Facebook. Over 120 people have signed the petition, which calls on parents to attend tonight’s board meeting to voice their opinions.
3:28 Nearly 5,000 people in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and almost a fifth of those people have also received their second dose. That makes more people in the region who have received at least one dose of the vaccine than have tested positive for the virus. Across the region, 4,248 people have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Jan. 20, according to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation.
“I’m very pleased about that. Every single shot in an arm is one less person who might succumb to this terrible disease,” said Hodges.
Since late December, Hodges has flown across the region trying to get as many of these shots in as many arms as possible.