Alaska recorded 22 deaths associated with COVID-19 during the 12 months ending in August, including one child, according to a new state review that describes the virus as endemic but still capable of causing serious illness.

The Alaska Department of Health epidemiology bulletin, issued Sept. 23, covers the September 2025 through August 2026 respiratory season. It says laboratory-confirmed cases generally numbered in the hundreds each month, with a high point near 1,000 in September 2025, another peak in February and an increase again in August.

Those figures are useful for tracking direction, not for counting every infection. Many people with mild symptoms use home tests or do not test, leaving them outside laboratory reporting. The state also tracks visits for COVID-like illness — fever, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing without influenza or a confirmed COVID diagnosis — to broaden its view of respiratory activity.

The 22-death toll is substantially below Alaska's earlier pandemic years. The state's 2024 vital-statistics report counted 58 deaths in which COVID was an underlying or contributing cause. In 2021, the peak year cited in the report, Alaska recorded 762 COVID-associated deaths and the disease ranked as the state's third-leading cause of death.

The latest data do not support treating COVID as absent or following a simple calendar. State epidemiologists said the virus is now established and circulating regularly, but it has not settled into a perfectly predictable seasonal pattern. That differs from influenza and common cold viruses, which more consistently rise around familiar periods such as the start of school.

Alaska Beacon reported that the month-to-month movement in Alaska roughly tracked the national pattern during the same period. The publication also noted that the state continues to recommend vaccination for adults and children older than 6 months, with particular attention to people at higher risk.

For eligible families, the state's Vaccines for Children program provides federally purchased vaccines through participating providers. Eligibility includes children enrolled in Medicaid, children without insurance and certain underinsured or American Indian and Alaska Native children. The program is intended to prevent cost from becoming a barrier to recommended childhood vaccination.

The practical reading of the new season report is twofold. Alaska's COVID burden has declined sharply from the pandemic peak, but the virus still produced deaths, measurable waves and demand for medical care in the latest complete season. Because laboratory counts miss home-tested and untested infections, residents and health officials cannot use the confirmed-case total alone to measure community spread.

The state has not identified a fixed annual peak for COVID. That makes current surveillance, vaccination access and individual risk assessment more useful than assuming the virus will arrive only in winter or during the back-to-school period. The next complete season report will show whether the recent late-summer rise persisted.