On March 25, 2020, the Alabama Department of Public Health announced the first death to be officially attributed to the COVID-19 outbreak. Thelma Jenny McDonald, nicknamed “Chicken,” lived in Stevenson, a small town in the northeast part of the state. She died at age 53.

That death came two weeks after March 11, the day many people realized how bad the outbreak already had become, as the World Health Organization officially declared a global pandemic. It also was the day the National Basketball Association, the NCAA basketball playoffs and golf’s PGA Tour abruptly shut down after players tested positive for what was still called the Wuhan virus, so dubbed for the Chinese city where it was first detected.

Almost a year later, more than 10,000 Alabamians have perished from COVID. The official death toll passed five figures as of Wednesday, with 10,029 fatalities.

The path to 10,000 has been one of slow progressions and fearsome streaks. It took more than three months after McDonald’s passing for the death toll to reach 1,000, but a big spike after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays led to a single week in late January when more than 1,000 deaths were reported.

In the early days of the pandemic, governments quickly curtailed activities they thought might aggravate the spread of the virus. Gatherings were restricted to as few as 10 people in some urban areas eventually, schools were quickly converted to online-only teaching and almost all college, high school and club sports were shut down. Churches closed their sanctuaries and moved services to Facebook Live and other online platforms.

The business world was greatly affected, especially the hospitality industry.

Restaurants were forced to close dining rooms and do business through take-out or delivery only, causing many to shut down for good while others adapted. Delivery services such as DoorDash and Uber Eats were some of the few firms that prospered from the new normal.

Tourism slowed to a crawl, with airlines cutting back on flights and hotel occupancies falling precipitously, causing some to close either temporarily or for good. Theme parks were forced to shut down, with some just now reopening in time for spring break. The halt in travel even caused some gas stations to briefly reduce prices to less than a dollar a gallon.

The cutbacks had the intended effect of keeping the virus spread in check, at least to a point. But businesses suffered almost as much damage from the virus as people did, with layoffs forcing the federal government to pass stimulus measures to keep the economy afloat. Some of those measures are continuing today.

As people were told to stay home, they substituted their previous work/school/activities routines by binge watching TV, eating take-out food, learning how to work from home and attempting to help with the education of their children. They began to chafe at the restrictions.

That was especially true in places such as Alabama, where suspicion of “the government” is plentiful even in the best of times. Preventative measures were either eased by authorities or ignored by the people, and infections and deaths started to increase — slowly at first, but then rapidly and for months on end.

By the end of the year, holidays and associated gatherings prompted a sharp spike in the spread of COVID, which had been forecast by many public health professionals whose fears of what would happen when families and friends gathered in close quarters were realized. New case numbers rose alarmingly in January, reaching more than 4,000 a day in the second week.

January by far was the deadliest month of the pandemic, during which 2,861 deaths were reported by the ADPH. Beginning on Jan. 25 and continuing for two weeks, the 7-day moving average of deaths was 100 per day or higher, reaching a record of 154.29 per day on Jan. 29.

The spike filled hospital beds to crisis levels throughout the month, forcing some health care facilities to convert regular rooms to COVID needs and divert incoming cases to other facilities.

Since that peak, the pandemic data has taken a turn for the better. With the introduction of two new vaccines in December and another one this week, the number of deaths reported each day has fallen by almost three-fourths in only 50 days of 2021.

The reduction is the result in part of people following masking and social distancing rules as they returned to their daily routines. Mask mandates and social distancing were back in force in public places. Sports and other events where large crowds would normally be found were held with greatly reduced capacities or with no fans at all. School systems have gradually returned to in-school teaching, though many parents have opted to stay with online instruction to this day.

Only this week have significant reversals of mitigation procedures been announced. Both Texas and Mississippi have done away with most restrictions, to the dismay of public health authorities who claim that the reversals have come too soon.

Gov. Kay Ivey is having a press conference Thursday morning to announce whether she’ll extend Alabama’s masking order or allow it to expire on Friday.

On Wednesday, the 7-day average of new cases fell below 700 per day for the first time since June 24. The average of deaths is down to just above 40 per day, levels not seen since the first week of the year. And the number of hospital beds filled by COVID inpatients has dropped drastically, with current occupancy at about one-fifth of what it was in mid-January.

The biggest problem now for public health officials, aside from the public letting down its guard, is getting vaccine doses into the arms of more people. Alabama, like most other states, has been vaccinating people considered most vulnerable to the disease.

To date, ADPH reports more than 1.4 million doses have been delivered to the state, with 972,649 doses administered. More than 333,000 people have had both of the two doses required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The new Johnson and Johnson vaccine is getting a boost from one of the company’s biggest competitors. Merck and Company has signed a deal to manufacture and package the vaccine, which can be stored in normal refrigerators instead of the extreme-cold freezers needed for Moderna and Pfizer. The J&J vaccine also requires just one dose. Those two factors mean that the new vaccine can be made and distributed much quicker. That caused President Joe Biden to revise his estimate of the time when enough vaccines would be available for every American; the estimate is now moved back to late May.

For the moment, Alabama is still having a problem getting enough vaccine to satisfy demand. In metro Birmingham, for instance, appointments for shots are still hard to get, especially in Shelby County.

As the world approaches the end of the first full year of the pandemic next week, health officials continue to urge people to keep using masks, washing hands and maintaining social distancing.

Aside from not being close to vaccination levels that would lead to “herd immunity,” it’s not yet clear whether people who are fully vaccinated can still transmit the virus to others.