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The Alaska Departments of Environmental Conservation and Health and Social Services recommends these measures to Alaskans Tuesday.
From Bristol Bay to the North Slope cases of rabies have been confirmed with the largest count in nome.
The Bering Strait Regions usually sees up to five rabies cases in animals each year, but in October of last year, the state along with the centers for disease control confirmed 35 cases.
For the first time in over 20 years in Alaska, one of these cases involved a river otter.
A veterinary epidemiologist with the Department of Health and Social Services, Dr. Louisa Castrodale said in a release that the outbreak underscores the importance of avoiding contact with wild or stray animals that may carry rabies and also vaccinating pets against rabies, for their safety and to prevent transmission to other animals or humans.
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We re making this important information available without a subscription as a public service. But we depend on reader support to do this work. Please consider supporting independent journalism in Alaska, at just $3.69 a week for an online subscription. A relatively small group of Alaskans who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have since tested positive for the coronavirus. They are referred to as “vaccine breakthrough” cases and are rare compared to the total number of people fully vaccinated, health officials say. By late last week, 310 breakthrough cases had been detected in Alaska, out of the more than 250,000 Alaskans who are considered fully vaccinated.
Fairbanks North Star Borough saw a sharp spike in new Covid-19 cases this week while the state upward trend slowed.
âWeâve seen some outrageous numbers,â said Fairbanks borough Chief of Staff Jim Williams. âThey were outrageous in a sense that on Wednesday we saw over a hundred new cases â our third highest number.â
On Thursday, only 32 new people contracted the virus across the borough and on Wednesday Fairbanks was leading the state in new cases, according to reports from the Department of Health and Social Services. The city reported 70 new cases on Wednesday while North Pole reported 34, and two more were registered somewhere else in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. With more than 27 cases per 100,000 people in the borough, only Mat-Su is doing worse.
Print article After three rabid foxes were found in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta over the last few weeks, health officials from the region are asking residents to take precautionary measures. “We encourage you to have your pets vaccinated as soon as possible so they are protected from exposure to wildlife, especially since we have confirmed cases of rabies in YK communities,” Alyssa Leary, interim environmental health services manager for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., said in a written statement. Any person who is bitten or scratched by a pet or wildlife should be seen by their local clinic or hospital and report the exposure, Leary said.