June 16, 2021
Since my last letter to you on Sunday, ADPH reported 550 new cases on Monday (covering 3 days), 290 more cases on Tuesday and 160 today. Over the last 7 days, the daily average of new cases is 183 per day, compared with 321 per day at this time last week. This is outstanding news, suggesting that the Memorial Day weekend has not (so far) spurred any uptick in infection.
More good news - there are now just 185 Covid patients reported in 104 hospitals throughout the State of Alabama (1.78 patients per reporting hospital), which is the lowest hospitalization rate for our state since March 2020, the first month such data was collected. Unfortunately, deaths are a lagging indicator and 22 more of them were reported in Alabama over the last 3 days.
Finally, our vaccination rate has seen a recent upswing. In the last week, an average of 14.5K doses per day were administered, more than doubling the daily average from the week before (admittedly a low bar). Alabama has now administered at least one dose to 1,822,146 people, covering 43.5% of the eligible age 12 and older population, and 37.2% of the state’s entire population. At least 1,508,504 people have been fully vaccinated, or 30.8% of the entire population.
While Alabama’s overall low rate of vaccination and the potential spread of variants are cause for concern in the future, there is no doubt that our state and the nation are in a good place right now. With the lifting of Covid restrictions in California (and Washington State later this month), only Oregon, New Mexico and Michigan have yet to fully reopen. So, perhaps it is timely to look back and put our pandemic experience in some perspective.
According to worldometers.info, since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has reported (i) 34.4 million confirmed Covid cases,19.4% of the world’s total cases and (ii) 615,247 deaths,16% of the world’s deaths. Among countries with populations of 1.5 million or more, the U.S. is 6th in the world in per capita cases and 17th in per capita deaths. Eastern Europe (Czechia, Slovenia, Lithuania, in particular) is the only area of the world that rivals the U.S. in per capita cases. Peru, Hungary, Czechia, Bulgaria and Brazil have per capita death rates that are more than 20% higher than the U.S. (Peru’s death rate is by far the highest in the world, 3 times higher than the death rate in the U.S.).
If Alabama were a country, (i) our per capita rate of confirmed cases (11,174 per 100K) would rank 4th in the world and (ii) our per capita death rate (230 per 100K) would rank 9th, just behind Brazil. Compared to other states, Alabama ranks 15th in per capita cases (the Dakotas and Iowa are the highest) and 8th in per capita deaths. Of the 8 states with the highest death rates, 5 of them - NJ, NY, Mass, R.I. and CT - are in the Northeast, which was devastated last spring when little was known about how to treat the virus. Along with Alabama, the other states with the highest death rates are Arizona and Mississippi, where there are high levels of comorbidity.
In February, a study conducted by demographers at UCLA found that the average life expectancy in the U.S. had dropped by almost 2 years due to Covid - from 78.8 to 77.1 years. “This is the United States’ largest decline in annual life expectancy since World War II,” said UCLA professor Patrick Heuveline, adding that Americans who have died of COVID-19 lost an average of 12 years from their expected lifespans. The totals:
6/3 - 430
6/4 - 557
6/7 - 739
6/8 - 216
6/9 - 305
6/10 - 290
6/11 - 188
6/14 - 550
6/15 - 290
6/16 - 160