January 28, 2021
When you analyze a state’s COVID data for clues as to future trends, it is easy to get frustrated. You quickly realize there are lots of moving parts, and they don’t always move in tandem. Alabama’s data today provide the case in point: (i) new daily cases broke out of a level trend that has held for weeks; (2) hospitalizations appear to have leveled off after a steep decline; and (iii) deaths continue to skyrocket.
There were 3,648 new cases (incl. 1,144 probables), the highest daily total since January 12. This breaks a 2-week pattern of roughly 3,000 cases per day. The positivity rate ranged between 31.5% and 34.4%. Yesterday, Alabama’s hospitals averaged fewer than 20 patients per hospital - 19.3 to be exact - for the first time in over 6 weeks. Today, there was little change - 19.2 patients per hospital - as 107 hospitals reported caring for 2,052 patients.
Alabama’s death rate, however, continues to soar - 168 more COVID deaths were reported today and 2,513 deaths in January alone. Alabama’s 19.8 deaths per 100K over the last 7 days are, by far, the highest in the nation, topping Arizona’s 15.1 deaths per 100K by a long shot. Virtually all the deaths reported today occurred in the last 6 weeks.
On the vaccine front, ADPH’s updated dashboard shows that 302K doses have been administered out of 764K doses received (39.6%). Around 5% of the State’s population has now received one shot and just under 0.9% have received both shots. In the great race between vaccines and highly contagious variants, the variants are currently winning after discovery of the first cases of the U.K. variant in Alabama (2 cases in Montgomery County and 1 in Jefferson County), including 2 young people under the age of 19. The U.K. variant is thought to be more transmissible than the original virus, and there is some evidence that, unlike the original virus, children have the same propensity to be infected as adults.
Perhaps more ominously, the first 2 cases of the South Africa variant were detected in South Carolina today, involving people with no history of travel to South Africa. This implies that community spread of the variant was already underway before the cases surfaced. This new variant has not proven to be more lethal, but mutations make it 50% easier to catch, allowing it to quickly become the dominant strain in South Africa. Although Moderna’s vaccine is effective against the South Africa variant, its efficacy is not as high. Moderna announced it will initiate human trials to determine if a third shot of the existing vaccine added to the current two-dose regimen will make the vaccine more effective against the S.A. virus.
As experts learn more and more about the coronavirus, it seems increasingly apparent that available vaccines will not be magic all-purpose silver bullets. Even after vaccination, masks and personal vigilance may continue to be essential for the foreseeable future, as additional research adds to our body of knowledge. The totals:
1/15 - 2945
1/16 - 3153
1/17 - 1917
1/18 - 1430
1/19 - 2515
1/20 - 3112
1/21 - 2881
1/22 - 3551
1/23 - 3355
1/24 - 1728
1/25 - 1839
1/26 - 2900
1/27 - 3177
1/28 - 3648
Jefferson leads with 386 cases, followed by 303 cases in Madison County, 292 cases in Mobile County, and 224 cases in Tuscaloosa County.