Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, new strains of the virus continue to develop and adapt. Similar to national trends, cases in Alaska — especially the Southeast — have risen over the course of the summer.

Positive test rates in Southeast Alaska — according to CDC figures — dropped significantly between October 2024 and June 2025. However, within the past month, data shows the case rate per 100,000 residents escalating mildly.

The Alaska Department of Health’s COVID-19, RSV, and influenza figures are updated weekly. As of Aug. 2, Southeast Alaska led the count at 59.6 positive results per 100,000 residents within a given region; that number was 5.4 in the middle of March, six months ago.

In the final week of July, that number peaked at 94.8 per 100,000.

State and nationwide positive rates followed a similar pattern. Across all 10 Alaska regions, a drop in cases over the winter was bookended by high positive test rates in the summer months between April and September.

However, the “case counts may be on the lower end due to the absence of people testing,” Jennifer Bergen — a public health nurse IV at the Department of Public Health — told the Ketchikan Daily News.

Joe McLaughlin is the state epidemiologist and the chief of the Alaska Section of Epidemiology at the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Across the state — and the United States as a whole, according to McLaughlin — cases of COVID-19 have been on the rise.

“People throughout Alaska and all the various communities want to know what’s happening with COVID right now,” he told the Ketchikan Daily News. “And the answer is, COVID cases are increasing across the United States — and in Alaska we’re seeing higher case counts in some regions of the state than others.”

The Ketchikan Daily News contacted PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center Communications Director Kate Govaars about instances of COVID-19 seen at the facility. Govaars redirected contact to Ketchikan Public Health.

Bergen noted that the state DOH does not track COVID-19 cases at the local level anymore. She called the increase “not surprising,” citing the presence of seasonal workers, resident travel, and cruise ship passengers in Southeast Alaska throughout the summer months.

The Nimbus variant of COVID-19 overtook another variant, LB8.1, in late spring of 2025 as the most common strain seen in positive COVID-19 tests. Both are offshoots of the Omicron variant.

Authorities at the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health in Hong Kong, and McLaughlin, say that there is no cause to believe that mutations of the virus like LB8.1 or Nimbus pose a threat of more severe illness than other types of COVID-19.

“We’re seeing an increased incidence of COVID-19, and then here’s the emergency department visits, they’re up; hospitalizations are slightly up and deaths really haven’t increased much,” McLaughlin said. “There’s a little bit of a blip there, but nothing too dramatic.”

However, Nimbus’s heightened transmissibility capacities mean it can spread far more advantageously than some other Omicron variants.

Nimbus is nicknamed “razor blade throat” for the sharp, painful sore throat reported by those who contract it. While more capable of passing from one person to another as compared to other strains of COVID-19, it travels by the same means.

The CDC heavily promoted the wearing of masks, and creating social distance, when COVID-19 rose to public awareness due to the virus’s nature as airborne.

“If somebody coughs on you or sneezes … (with the flu or RSV, then how you) … get infected is through respiratory droplets or coming directly into contact with respiratory secretions,” he said. “COVID’s different. COVID is transmitted not only through respiratory droplets, but also it’s transmitted through what’s called the airborne route.”

This route is also how the measles virus — which he calls “the most transmissible virus that we know of” — makes its way from one carrier to another. Droplet nuclei (aerosols formed when these droplets evaporate) are small enough to remain floating in the air, where they have increased potential to infect others. In general, COVID-19 has relatively high transmission capabilities compared to other diseases.

A contributing factor to any outbreak of disease is the amount of time a collective population is spending indoors. While cold weather itself doesn’t cause illness, the tendency of people to remain inside during excessively hot or cool temperatures places them at heightened risk of contraction due to the lack of air circulation — causing cold and flu rates to often elevate during the winter season.

One major detail that remains elusive is when people can expect to contract, or be on guard for, COVID-19. The virus’s relative novelty means it has yet — if ever — to reveal a pattern of seasonality.

“It’s a novel virus, you know. This is a virus that just emerged in human populations not long ago … during the COVID pandemic,” McLaughlin said. “Whereas influenza viruses, RSV virus, you know; some of these other viruses that have clear seasonality — they’ve been around in human populations for a long, long time.”

He anticipates COVID-19 will, at some point in the near future, establish a season of prevalence.

For those hoping to protect themselves from a case of COVID-19 this summer, McLaughlin recommends wearing masks and distancing socially as one feels comfortable.

He suggests Ketchikan’s status as a vacation hotspot could elevate the rates of COVID-19 among those traveling or exposed to tourist crowds — and that the nature of a cruise ship makes quarantining difficult.

“Every year we have outbreaks of influenza, RSV, norovirus, COVID and other respiratory bugs, and GI gastrointestinal bugs, on cruise ships. So that is one of the risks that people take, or one of the risks that people take when they go on a cruise ship, is the risk of actually contracting one of these respiratory or gastrointestinal viruses or bacteria,” he said.

“We’re still in peak tourist season in Alaska, so we are going to see not only local transmission of COVID, but we’ll also see — you know — importation of COVID cases from … the Lower 48.”