Planes, sleds bring vaccines to Alaska natives

These vials of COVD-19 vaccines are being packed up in a facility in Fairbanks, Alaska.

As far as they’ve come, they’ve got further to go.

These doses are set for the small town of Eagle, a one-time gold rush outpost on the Yukon River near the Canadian border.

Despite its remote geography and often-inhospitable climate, Alaska ranks among the top U.S. states for getting COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of its residents.

By early April, more than 42% of those aged 16 and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, one of the highest rates of inoculation per capita.

A large part of that success story is due the efforts by the native population, who used their federally recognized sovereign powers to obtain doses from the U.S. Indian Health Service.

Karma Ulvi is the First Chief of Eagle Village and a community health aide.

"Eagle has roughly about 120 people or so and we've been able to get about 80, 85 vaccinated. So pretty much the entire community has been vaccinated. And that is really nice for all of us, just since we're so remote out here."

The need is particularly important here. With limited phone and internet service and no wintertime road access, the nearest hospital is at least three hours away by aircraft.

"You know, we're getting like 60 percent of our food from subsistence, hunting, fishing, gardening."

Sonja Sager is an Eagle resident who says that even a community that prides itself on self-sufficiency is grateful for the help.

"That is in itself very valuable and it's valuable to us, but it's also just valuable to society to have people that can take care of themselves. But we cannot give ourselves a shot, so we are very, very grateful."

Alaska Natives imposed some of the nation's earliest and most robust lockdowns and mask mandates to curb the pandemic. But the virus reached rural sites nonetheless, with devastating results.

According to the state epidemiology office, indigenous people accounted for 37 percent of Alaska’s COVID-19 deaths last year, more than twice their proportion of the population.

State data show in some extremely remote Native villages vaccination rates are now approaching 90 percent.