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Alaska’s Remote Villages Race Against Time and History The coronavirus has spread into the most remote villages, a reminder of earlier pandemics that ravaged the state. Now there is a rush to deliver vaccines in time. Credit... March 7, 2021 BIRCH CREEK, Alaska — As the turboprop plane rumbled to a halt at the edge of a frozen landing strip, Vennessa Joseph and her fellow villagers were racing to meet it, their snowmobiles kicking up a flurry of powder behind them. Within minutes, six residents of Birch Creek, bundled in parkas and gloves in the 25-below-zero afternoon, had piled in...

3:58 One of the biggest challenges for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine from drug companies Pfizer and BioNTech is keeping it cold. But Dr. Ellen Hodges, contending with sub-zero temperatures on a remote Southwest Alaska airport tarmac last month, had the opposite problem as she prepared to vaccinate frontline health-care workers. “It became immediately apparent that the vaccine was going to freeze in the metal part of the needle,” she said. “It was just kind of wild.” Distributing the COVID-19 vaccine is hard enough on the road system. But the obstacles in rural Alaska are on anothe...

In Alaska, the coronavirus vaccine is heading to tiny villages on small planes and snow machines. The massive undertaking echoes previous efforts to get vaccines to remote corners of the state.

Credit Katie Basile / KYUK It was a welcome surprise when the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation received nearly three times as many COVID-19 vaccine doses as it had expected. On Dec. 16, YKHC received a shipment of 2,925 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from the State of Alaska and the Indian Health Service. As of Dec. 11, the health corporation had been expecting just 1,000 doses in its initial allocation. This will speed up plans for distribution of the vaccine.   On Dec. 17, YKHC began COVID-19 vaccinations of frontline health care workers in Bethel, as well as residents and staff o...