Each morning a vehicle containing hundreds of samples approaches an unassuming building located in UAF’s upper campus. As the packages are carefully handled and test tubes are collected, a meticulously coordinated system of scientists starts its daily routine: extracting viral genetic material, testing its contents, and reporting the results. Each step carefully studied, each movement repeated, over and over again.
Behind these numbered cuvettes, each containing a small amount of fluid, there is a human waiting for answers. What caused their disease, how could they cure it, and what are the dangers others might encounter?
With the recent increase in measles affecting the U.S. and vaccination rates remaining below herd immunity levels in Alaska, concern is growing among public health officials.
Alaska sits in a dangerous place for potential measles outbreaks. As of the last quarter of 2025, the State of Alaska Department of Health reported a 78% coverage of the first dose for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in infants. These numbers are extremely low when compared to the WHO guidelines of 95% coverage to achieve herd immunity.
From influenza and the common cold, all the way to fatal illnesses such as Ebola and rabies, viral diseases represent one of the biggest threats to public health. This is accentuated in sensitive groups such as infants, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Alaska’s Virology lab has the complicated task of identifying and tracking down such threats to protect our population.
The Alaska Virology lab operates following strict protocols and procedures. This is to ensure that each result has maximal accuracy and trackability. “To ensure that we are making sure we have quality in each step of the process, we have controls for each section,” mentioned Public Health Microbiologist 3 and lab manager Nisha Fowler. This is so that in the case of a problem, one can “pinpoint exactly where things broke down,” she continued.
In a setting where accuracy and precision matter more than anything, the training for a new employee of the Virology lab takes at least three months prior to being able to operate fully, Fowler explained. Still, competency assessments on laboratory techniques are taken by every single employee each year, with no exemptions made.
Individuals are not the only ones having to prove competency. To ensure that the lab is working correctly as a system, the College of American Pathologists tests each public lab in the U.S. three times each year for every test they offer. After two failures in a row, the lab is prohibited from reporting on the assay it failed until a new test is taken and passed, as stated by Fowler.
While it is easy to worry about such catastrophic diseases as rabies, often more subtle viruses quietly take a far greater toll.
Cough, coryza (runny nose), and conjunctivitis are the early nonspecific symptoms. After approximately 7 to 18 days from exposure, the characteristic skin rash starts to appear, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO. Although most measles infections are cleared with no long term effects, some cases develop complications. This is where the real dangers start to expose themselves. “Complications… such as pneumonia, brain swelling, and long-term neurological damage, are severe and deadly,” Parker mentioned.
Parker mentioned another, even scarier aspect of measles infections. The virus acts on the immune system by destroying memory B and T cells. Such cells are responsible for a human’s immunological memory. An individual infected with measles becomes susceptible to dangerous diseases against which the host might have previously developed immunity.
Debilitating the immune response has another implication. Pre-existing infections can, in fact, exploit damaged immune cells to proliferate and cause so-called superinfections.
“Vaccines are available and promoted in Alaska,” highlighted Parker, yet vaccine hesitancy is being “exacerbated by this age of misinformation.” MMR vaccine complications occur extremely rarely. In about 1 in 3,000 to 4,000 doses, the MMR vaccine causes a febrile seizure after one to two weeks of administration, as reported by the CDC. Still, such a complication is resolved with no long-term effects.
Other adverse effects mentioned online, such as relationships between the MMR vaccine and autism, have no scientific foundation. Misinformation is identified as one of the major causes of the decrease in vaccination rates by experts such as Parker, who mentioned how “misinformation travels faster and is more widely accepted than the truth.”
Decreasing trust in public health is not only decreasing vaccination rates, it also makes the sector vulnerable to budget cuts. According to Parker, “when public health is working well and is sufficiently supported, it is largely unnoticed since there are fewer outbreaks, fewer foodborne illnesses, cleaner water to drink, and generally life is perceived as naturally safe.”
This “suffering from success” experienced by public health affects every level of it, but even more, it affects laboratories where one to one interactions with the public are minimal or absent. This lack of human interaction is recognized among laboratory technicians, and efforts are being made in order to try and improve.
Yet, a strong sentiment of duty and responsibility is what drives the work of public health laboratories such as the Alaska State Virology lab. “We have to remember that behind every tube that has a number on it, it’s someone’s life,” as noted by Public Microbiologist 2 Jeremy Roe.
This sense of duty is not only metaphorical, but it is what drives the actual work being done in the lab. The concept of procrastinating tasks does not exist in Alaska’s State lab, according to Fowler.
One of the policies of public health is that “it is nonpartisan,” said Parker. Similarly, as viruses are able to infect any person, public health is meant for everyone, and everyone is treated equally, reflecting WHO guidelines on health equity and universal access to care.
The State of Alaska Department of Health publishes an “Alaska Vaccination Coverage Report” each quarter. Information used in this article were taken from the quarter 4, 2025 report
