Alaska’s far-flung vaccine program
A charter plane took six residents of Birch Creek, Alaska, to be vaccinated in Fort Yukon.Ash Adams for The New York Times

In 1925, dog sledders mushed through a blizzard to bring medicine to people suffering from a diphtheria outbreak in Nome, a city on the Alaskan coast.

In 2021, dog sleds are still part of public health. Alaskans have also boarded turboprop bush planes, boats and snowmobiles in a sprawling delivery effort to distribute vaccines to remote villages in the dead of winter. One team recently arrived in a village as the temperature hit negative 61 degrees Fahrenheit.

Many Alaska Natives — who have died from the virus at quadruple the rate of white residents — live in remote villages. For a while, that seemed like an advantage. But when the virus did arrive in those villages, residents had little access to care. In some communities, more than 60 percent of people contracted the coronavirus.

But despite all odds, Alaska has administered a second dose of a vaccine to 16 percent of residents — the highest percentage in the United States. In part, that’s thanks to a steady supply of vaccines made available. But it’s also a result of persistent organizing to make sure no doses go to waste. A network of tribal health aides provide frontline health care and critical testing, treatment and telemedicine links with faraway hospitals — an approach that is now being considered in the Lower 48.