March 16, 2021 - Striking the Right Balance

Striking the Right Balance

March 16, 2021

Welcome back to a new week of reporting on the pandemic in Alabama. In my last report, I noted there were 448 new cases on Friday and 594 on Saturday. ADPH reported 4,007 additional cases yesterday resulting from tests performed between 10/1/2020 and 1/1/2021. Those cases are too old to be relevant today. If you disregard this backlog, there were 549 new cases yesterday and 488 more cases today (incl. just 9 probables), and the 7-day average is 585 cases per day. This suggests that new cases have plateaued at around 500 per day for the last 10 days. The weekly positivity rate is 13.8%, while 10 deaths were recorded in the last 3 days combined.

For the week ended March 13, 171,543 doses were administered, the highest for any week to date. The J&J vaccine represents 17,629, or 10.3% of the total doses. A very clear pattern has emerged in the last 3 weeks. Every Monday, we have administered around 24K doses per day, followed by 4 consecutive days of between 32K and 39K doses per day. Then, every Saturday, the number drops to around 10K doses. As the week ends on Sunday, the number drops to 5K-7K. If only the momentum established on weekdays could be carried over to the weekend, we would be doing so much better.

As it is, Alabama has now administered at least one dose to 871,536 people, covering 33.5% of the prioritized population and 17.8% of the State’s entire population (national average = 21.7%). At least 509,000 people have been fully vaccinated, or 10.4% of the population (national average = 11.8%). Georgia is the only state that trails Alabama in percentage of population receiving 1 dose, while 5 states trail our percentage of those who are fully vaccinated.

The U.S. is vaccinating at a faster clip than every country in the world besides Israel, the U.A.E. and U.K. (over one-third of British citizens have received one shot). Outside of the U.K., Europe is really struggling. The governments of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal and others recently halted the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, pending the investigation of reports that 3 patients in Norway developed blood clots after taking the vaccine. Although the AstraZeneca vaccine has not been approved for use in the U.S, it was expected to play a leading role in the fight against Covid internationally, especially in Africa and parts of south Asia.

The European experience highlights the fragile nature of this battle, even here in the U.S. I was reminded of that when I learned that Duke University enforced a campus lockdown this weekend after 220 students tested positive and 200 more were quarantined, the highest number of one-week cases at Duke since the pandemic started. The outbreak was traced back to unsanctioned fraternity and selective living group recruitment activities that took place off-campus.

After weeks of declining deaths and hospitalizations, new hot spots have emerged in various regions of the U.S., such as Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and Maryland. Other places, including perhaps Alabama, are no longer seeing steep declines. I often struggle to strike the right balance between optimism and restraint in this newsletter. My optimism has been on the ascendance lately due to the rapid pace of vaccinations. Yet, there are moments like these that remind me we cannot let our guard down. As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”. The totals:

2/27 - 834

3/2 - 652

3/3 - 2733

3/4 - 922

3/5 - 811

3/6 - 524

3/9 - 524

3/10- 782

3/11- 865

3/12- 448

3/13- 594

3/14- 368

3/15- 448

3/16- 594