January 10, 2021
With 2,750 new cases today (incl. 464 probables), Alabama officially surpassed 400,000 cases since the start of the pandemic. There were also 35 more deaths. One bit of hopeful news: hospitalizations declined by around 100 patients, to 2,863 in 99 reporting hospitals - an average of 28.92 per hospital (down slightly from 29.65 patients per hospital yesterday). That equates to 3,000-3,100 hospitalizations if a full complement of hospitals were reporting.
It took 149 days from the date of our first case (March 12) to accumulate 100,000 cases on August 8; it took 90 more days to reach 200,000 on November 6; then 39 more days to top 300,000 on December 15; and finally, just 26 days to hit 400,000 today. If we averaged 5,000 cases per day going forward (as we did the last 5 days), then we would hit half a million by the end of this month.
It’s not easy to comprehend the magnitude of 400,000 cases. That is nearly equivalent to every man, woman and child living in our second most populous county - Mobile County. No other state in the union with a population of less than 5.6 million has seen 400,000 COVID cases. Alabama’s population: 4.9 million. As a comparison, Connecticut (population: 3.5 million), has had half as many cases as Alabama despite being hard-hit last spring, when the outbreak appeared to be largely centered in New England.
Alabama received its first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine on December 15, the day we crossed the 300,000 case threshold. In the intervening 26 days, we’ve had almost twice as many new infections (100K) as initial inoculations (57K). If that trend continues - let’s say, 5,000 infections and 2,500 inoculations per day - it would take 600 days for the 4.5 million Alabamians who have not yet tested positive to either become infected or receive their first dose of a vaccine.
To be clear, I don’t think for a minute that the current ratio of infections to inoculations will continue, but this illustrates the urgency of now. Positive cases are increasing at an alarming rate and, on average, one person dies of COVID for every 75 new cases in our State (current total: 400K cases and 5,334 deaths). There are just two ways to immunize the population - either by infection or vaccination. Unless the pace of vaccinations accelerates, it’s clear that a lot more suffering lies in store. The totals:
12/28 - 2269
12/29 - 3907
12/30 - 5106
12/31 - 4406
1/1 - 4521
1/2 - 3711
1/3 - 2476
1/4 - 2161
1/5 - 5498
1/6 - 4591
1/7 - 5046
1/8 - 5057
1/9 - 4863
1/10 - 2750
Jefferson County has averaged 609 cases per day over the last 7 days. Six more counties have averaged over 100 cases per day - Madison (242); Montgomery (197); Mobile (177); Shelby (170); Tuscaloosa (107); and Baldwin (106).