January 15, 2022
Alabama begins the long MLK weekend without a working Covid-19 dashboard. ADPH reported that it is experiencing “technical difficulties”, which is a polite way to say the website has crashed. Whatever the cause, ADPH has not officially updated its daily case count since January 12. Meanwhile, the Washington Post tracker says Alabama experienced 14,517 cases on Thursday, Jan.13, before the dashboard went down. If the WaPo tracker is accurate, Thursday was a single day record for the state.
Hospitalizations are reported directly to the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, so we do have updated data there. As of this morning, there are 2,515 patients throughout the State, which is 81% of the Delta peak and 76% of the January peak. Over the last 7 days, Alabama’s hospitalizations have climbed 37%, the 2nd fastest rising patient load in the nation over that period.
A great deal of attention is being paid to the record number of pediatric Covid-19 patients in Alabama hospitals. According to Dr. David Kimberlin of Children’s of Alabama, 9 of 10 Alabama kids between the ages of 5 and 11 are still not vaccinated and 2 of 3 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have not received a single shot. It should not be terribly surprising, then, that 56% of kids in the Children’s of Alabama emergency room tested positive for Covid-19. Total hospitalizations at Children’s of Alabama have tripled in the last 3 days, according to Dr. Kimberlin.
With so many children getting sick, schools throughout the State are struggling to stay open. According to the latest ADPH school dashboard on January 13, there were 16,035 schoolchildren reporting positive tests, over 5 times the number of kids (2,940) reporting positive last week.
Hoover City schools, Birmingham’s largest suburban school system, returned to a mandatory mask policy on Thursday after 3.4% of its students (454 kids) tested positive. Another suburban school system, Mountain Brook, has reopened after having to start the new year with three days of virtual instruction due to teacher and staff shortages. Its website reported the good news that the number of teachers and staff who are sick has declined to single digits.
Everyone is waiting with bated breath to know when the Omicron will peak. I have been tracking Omicron cases and hospitalizations in the Northeast and Upper Midwest regions for clues that might help answer this question. As of this morning, reported case counts in New Jersey and D.C. have declined 25% in the last 7 days, while New York’s cases have dropped 11%. The daily case counts in hard-hit Maryland, Illinois and Michigan have also declined double digits. As for hospitalizations, New Jersey and D.C. are down 3% and New York is up only 5%, a stark contrast to Alabama’s 37% increase over the same 7 days.
There is no guarantee Alabama will follow the hopeful lead of these other regions. Indeed, I am personally skeptical that it will, due to Alabama’s low vaccination rate and its cavalier attitude toward masks. At least one computer model has forecast that Alabama’s hospitalizations will peak around January 23, but real world experience often varies from computer models. Having been fooled by this virus in the past, I will make no predictions other than to say that one day the world will return to normal. Or perhaps, a new normal. The totals:
1/1 - 7,577
1/2 - 5,400
1/3 - 4,014
1/4 - 7,572
1/5 - 12,075
1/6 - 12,626
1/7 - 12,972
1/8 - 8,332
1/9 - 12,452
1/10 - 6,250
1/11 - 8,530
1/12 - 11,204
1/13 - 14,517
1/14 - Not reporting
1/15 - Not reporting