State's chief doctor wants to return focus back to wellness

May 25, 2022

Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon

Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer, stands outside a restaurant on May 6 in Palmer, her home city. In an interview, she reflected on two years of COVID-19.

When Dr. Anne Zink began working as the state’s chief medical officer in the summer of 2019, she had a vision of transforming the state’s health system into one that promotes health holistically rather than one that simply responds to sickness.

Then came COVID-19. At least a third of Alaskans have tested positive for the COVID virus as of the May 11 count, according to the state’s data hub, while more than 3,700 have been hospitalized and 1,235 have died.

Now, two years after the pandemic overtook her work and her life, rates of cases, hospitalizations and death are down and the crisi...

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