Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy told Newsmax TV his state took actions well before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic to help mitigate the spread of the virus — and it's paid off.
Dunleavy appeared on "Greg Kelly Reports" Thursday evening and said Alaska was prepared early on.
"We got a call by the U.S. State Department in January asking us to receive a planeload of department officials and their families out of Wuhan, China," said Dunleavy, alluding to U.S. diplomats fleeing the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.
"We agreed to bring in that planeload of Americans, and at that moment in mid-January, we stood up our EOC — our Emergency Operations Center — because we are on the international flying routes, but also Seattle is one of the larger cities we go to quite often. So we could see this coming, we stood it up, and we started a mitigation process early on and were prepared for this. We shut the state down totally."
As of Friday morning, Alaska has seen 300 cases of the virus and nine deaths. The number of cases is the lowest of any U.S. state.
Dunleavy said the virus-related closures and restrictions have dealt a severe blow to Alaska's economy.
"We are a big tourism state, cruise ships are not allowed now. Oil's been taking a pounding, we're an oil state. And so we've had to shut down a lot of our economy," he said.
"It's been brutal."
Dunleavy added that he is working with other state officials on plans to reopen the economy there.
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