Ghosts of 1918 pandemic haunt Bering Straits villages as they face COVID-19 without water or sewer
In rural Alaska villages with no water or sewer and hard to find hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies, following the CDC guidelines to help prevent the spread of disease requires "being a MacGyver at all times."
Iditarod DQ’s Lance Mackey for positive meth test during race
Mackey’s 21st place finish in this year’s race will be vacated after the positive test from a sample collected in White Mountain, the Iditarod statement says. Mackey finished the race, his 16th Iditarod, in Nome on March 19.
Phase 2: Dunleavy announces plan to ease more restrictions, reopen bars, gyms
The state says it will also ease restrictions on intrastate travel, childcare facilities, and religious gatherings, among other plans.
Thousands of summer workers are headed to Alaska from Outside, where the infection rates are higher
“This is a question about levels of risk that Alaska is willing to tolerate,” said Bryan Fisher, the incident commander for Alaska’s pandemic response.
What Alaskans learned from ‘the mother of all pandemics’ in 1918
Overall, the flu killed a greater percentage of people in Alaska than in any other state or territory in the U.S. except for Samoa.
Is the ‘murder hornet’ headed to Alaska? Experts say it’s unlikely
The insects have been spotted within a few hundred miles of Southeast Alaska, but experts say that it's unlikely they could establish a breeding colony in the region's wet, temperate climate.
Alaska’s fate in massive Paycheck Protection Program rests on the shoulders of local bankers
PPP is a massive loan-a-thon for Northrim. The bank has employees in roles they never expected to take on.
Yes, Alaska snowbird, you can drive home again. Please don’t touch the Canadians.
Canada is letting returning Alaskans through its border but “you need to be prepared to just keep driving," says Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Dentists say mandating COVID-19 tests for patients before procedures will ‘shut down’ dentistry
New state guidelines require patients to get a negative result from a coronavirus test within 48 hours of many dental procedures. But dentists say that's not feasible.
As Mat-Su school board reconsiders banning books, home-grown rock band offers them for free
The Grammy-winning, Alaska-grown rock band Portugal. The Man is offering to send five so-called "controversial" books recently banned from school curriculum in the Mat-Su, where several band members grew up, to students there who want to read them.
Alaska’s chief medical officer pushes back against ‘herd immunity’ to control virus spread
State Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink said that if cases are allowed to grow unchecked, there's still a real risk of overwhelming Alaska's health care system.
How did politics around reopening Anchorage get so heated?
The politics around reopening Alaska’s economy are getting contentious. But blame isn’t spread uniformly. And in Anchorage, a vocal contingent is faulting the mayor over policies that are largely in lockstep with the governors.
ConocoPhillips to cut its Alaska oil production in half due to ‘unacceptably low’ prices
Conoco will cut oil production in Alaska by about 100,000 barrels per day for the month of June. That's about a fifth of the crude that typically flows down the trans-Alaska pipeline.
At the Dimond Center, the first big Anchorage mall to reopen, stores are ready but customers are few
At Alaska's largest retail space, businesses have opened again, but getting customers through the doors comes with many challenges.
A $3 million planeload of PPE for Alaska has landed in Anchorage
The plane is filled with orders of surgical masks, gowns, gloves and face shields that came from six different Chinese manufacturing companies, though tighter-fitting N95 masks couldn’t be obtained, said Heidi Hedberg, Alaska’s public health director.
‘The first glance at what’s coming’: Oilfield service companies alert state of more than 250 layoffs
Across the country, companies that provide oilfield services and equipment are cutting jobs and bracing for bankruptcy as the pandemic launches the oil and gas industry into a tailspin.
Zink to Alaskans: ‘It’s no time to let your guard down.’
Zink said that the state must go 28 days without a community case to say it doesn’t have community spread. That’s far from happening.
Ravn files plan to liquidate, as bankruptcy proceeds
The liquidation plan still needs to be approved in court, but it is a signal that Ravn, once Alaska’s largest rural airline, is ready to call it quits.
Ketchikan’s distance learning program was ready to scale up. So why did the state go with Florida’s?
Education officials in Alaska were surprised when the Dunleavy administration announced a one-year, $525,000 contract with an out-of-state digital school offering similar services to the Alaska Digital Academy.
Scientists are struggling to understand COVID-19. As Alaska ramps up testing, what will they find out?
There’s a lot you can learn from testing data, besides just who has the disease. State researchers are working to understand where it is, what symptoms people have and how to prepare for future outbreaks.