Alabama’s number of new coronavirus cases and patients requiring hospitalization continued to drop sharply in the last week.
Alabama’s seven-day average of new cases dropped to a rate not experienced since the Thanksgiving holiday, an event believed by experts to have kicked off the massive winter spike in numbers.
Over the past week, an average of 1,471 new COVID-19 cases were reported each day, down 29% from the 2,070 per day the state was averaging on January 28, according to BamaTracker, an independent site that collects and graphs statistics provided by the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH).
As of Thursday afternoon, 1,666 patients were in Alabama’s hospitals with a case of the coronavirus, down 19% from the 2,049 in hospitals on January 28. Hospitalizations have been declining steadily since January 11.
“We are clearly improving in Alabama,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, head of UAB Hospital’s Division of Infectious Diseases, in a media briefing this week. “We’re still seeing an unacceptable number of people dying,” she lamented.
Marrazzo warned the public that new variants of the coronavirus, from locations such as England, Brazil and South Africa are cause for concern.
According to Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris, around 10% of COVID-19 cases end up needing care in the hospital.
Over the past two weeks, 15.87% of the coronavirus tests administered in Alabama have come back positive. The state’s positivity rate has not declined as prominently as some of its other coronavirus numbers.
The ADPH issued new county-by-county assessments on Thursday and moved Madison and Macon Counties into the “High Risk” category.
Being categorized as low risk of transmission does not mean a county has exterminated the virus. Sixty-five of Alabama’s 67 counties reported a new coronavirus case on Thursday.
Alabama’s death toll from COVID-19 is now 8,365. Of those deaths, 1,723 are categorized as having a “probable” chance of being caused by the virus, but vanishingly few deaths categorized as probable have ever turned out to have died from a different cause than the coronavirus.
The state’s vaccination efforts are ongoing. ADPH has announced that Harris will provide a briefing on the rollout Friday at 11:00 a.m. to give the public more information on the rollout.
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: henry@new-yhn.local or on Twitter @HenryThornton95.
