Haines continues to have one of the highest COVID-19 vaccinations rates in the state or country.
“To date, (the Haines Health Center) has given 938 first doses and 316 second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine,” Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) spokesperson Maegan Bosak said.
Alaska leads the nation with 13.3% of the population having received the first dose of the vaccine. Nationwide, the rate is 8%.
SEARHC, which gets the bulk of its COVID-19 vaccine allotment through the Indian Health Service (IHS), has been prioritizing doses for remote communities like Haines that lack immediate hospital access.
Consortium-wide, SEARHC has administered 6,935 first doses and 3,095 second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Bosak. She said she’s not sure when the next batch of the vaccine will arrive in Haines.
The roughly 600 people who received their first doses on Jan. 15 and 16, when the health center closed for two days to focus solely on administering shots, are scheduled to receive their second doses next week.
Haines has had very few COVID-19 cases over the course of the pandemic. At present, the community has one active case, an asymptomatic female age 60-69. The case was reported on Jan. 25.
The woman is a close contact of a travel-related COVID-19 case reported on Jan. 14, according to state public health nurse Elaine Hickey. The original travel-related case, a symptomatic woman aged 50-59, has recovered.
Hickey said there are no pending COVID-19 tests related to either of the January cases, and neither case was related to the legislative intern who boarded an Alaska Seaplanes flight in Haines, despite testing positive for the COVID-19 virus.