July 30, 2022
This will have to be a short update due to my other obligations this weekend. The bottom line, however, is encouraging. For the first time since April 15, Alabama has experienced a week-to-week decline in average daily reported cases. Last Saturday, the daily average was 2,481; this week, it is 2,387 - a weekly drop of 3%. That is not much of a drop but it comes on the heels of two weeks of slowing weekly rises, so there is a hopeful hint that we have peaked.
Statewide hospitalizations rose from 836 patients on this day last week to 880 patients today, a rise of 5%. Alabama now has 18 Covid-related patients per 100K population, which remains a higher per capita hospitalization rate than all but 5 states; however, the 5% rate of increase week-over-week is pretty much middle of the pack compared to the rest of the states.
It has been reported that President Biden tested positive for Covid after testing negative every day this week. This is a classic case of “Paxlovid rebound”. Although Pfizer’s clinical trials showed Paxlovid results in rebound in 1% to 2% of patients who have completed a 5-day course of the antiviral Paxlovid, there have been enough anecdotes about Paxlovid rebound that many infectious disease physicians believe the rate could be significantly higher. Fortunately, the President’s case is asymptomatic so far, but he will now have to quarantine again.
One theory for the cause of Paxlovid rebound is that the drug potentially wipes out most of the virus before the body has a chance to build up its full immune arsenal. If there are little pockets of virus that manage to survive the treatment, they can start replicating again once the course of Paxlovid is finished. This theory has caused some experts to suggest that Paxlovid should be prescribed for longer than 5 days.
One way to describe Alabama’s current Covid status is that we seem to have plateaued. The same could be said of the Covid status of the United States as a whole. If you have driven out west, consider a different visual representation - that of a mesa, which is wide, flat and elevated, with steep sides. If we have indeed plateaued, then the burning question is whether the backside of the plateau is a gradual slope or a mesa-style cliff. In the case of the original Omicron spike in January, the recovery was steep, almost as steep as a mesa cliff. This time, it’s anybody’s guess. The totals:
7/16 - not reporting
7/17 - not reporting
7/18 - 5,952
7/19 - 2,701
7/20 - 2,907
7/21 - 2,917
7/22 - 2,889
7/23 - not reporting
7/24 - not reporting
7/25 - 5,727
7/26 - 2,884
7/27 - 2,765
7/28 - 2,685
7/29 - 2,651