Virginia Martin

For Service During the Time of COVID-19

Sixty-seven-foot-high digital messages thanking health care workers were projected on the side of a building on the UAB Hospital campus Wednesday night. Read more.

City Notifies Birmingham Library Employees of Furloughs; Library Board President Contests City Authority

Are Birmingham Public Library employees being furloughed? It depends on whom you’re asking. Most BPL employees have received letters from the city of Birmingham telling them they will be placed on unpaid leave starting Sept. 12. “You should not report to work after this date until such time further notice is given that normal operations can resume,” reads the letter, signed by Mayor Randall Woodfin and city Human Resources Director Jill Madajczyk and dated Aug. 18. Multiple BPL employees have confirmed that almost all of the BPL’s 230 staffers have received a furlough letter. However, in a letter dated two days later, library board of trustees President Eunice Johnson Rogers told employees to disregard the furlough letter and continue going to work because the decision about furloughs is up to the board. She also told the Birmingham City Council Tuesday that no decision has been made to furlough employees. “To date, the BPL Board of Trustees has not closed any branches or furloughed any employees,” she said. Read more.

UAB Nasal Spray COVID Vaccine Showing Early Success in Animal Tests

Preclinical studies of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate at UAB show results that distinguish it from other vaccine candidates that also are in the advanced stages of clinical development, Maryland-based Altimmune announced Tuesday. AdCOVID is a single dose, intranasal spray. In animal models at UAB, it’s use resulted in a potent T-cell response at the mucus layer of the lungs, including killer CD8+ T-cells, which can recognize and kill virally infected cells. Recent reports have suggested the importance of T-cell responses for long-term protection from COVID-19. Read more.

Budget Blows to Birmingham Schools and Transit Being Cushioned, Other Groups are Not as Lucky

Mayor Randall Woodfin defended some controversial cuts in his proposed FY 2021 budget Tuesday, arguing that, despite a significant drop in city funding, both Birmingham City Schools and the Birmingham-Jefferson Transit Authority would continue to operate as usual. Much of the money they lost will be made up by funds from elsewhere. Many other groups, including the library system, zoo and Railroad Park, are facing much bigger consequences. Read more.

Parole Hearings Continue Despite COVID-19

Since being authorized to hold parole hearings under a special order from Gov. Kay Ivey, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles has held more than 1,200 hearings and granted 253 paroles. In the past, the board has held public hearings. But because of the pandemic, it is holding hearings in which it reviews materials submitted by the interested parties. Read more.

College Virtual Learning Rife With Technical Challenges

WBHM Several Alabama colleges and universities welcomed students back to campus last week. Since the pandemic began, many schools have shifted toward more virtual instruction. For some students, that has introduced a lot of technical headaches. Like thousands of students, Andrew Yarborough, a sophomore at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, finished out the spring and summer semesters with online classes. The transition wasn’t an easy one. “I had a lot of trouble with my online classes just because, for starters, they weren’t formatted very well,” he said. “They were rushed online.” “Also because, you really have to find what works for you and that’s a big shift to have to do immediately,” he said. Read more.

House Passes Bill Protecting Postal Service in Mostly Partisan Vote

Voterama in Congress WASHINGTON – Alabama’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives, as with much of the House membership, voted mostly along party lines Saturday to shore up the postal service as the country nears an election when more ballots are expected to be mailed than ever before. The vote on HR 8015 was 257 for and 150 against. It would prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from reducing service below levels in effect at the start of the year and require it to treat official election envelopes as first-class mail in this fall's balloting. In addition, the bill would provide $25 billion requested by the postal service for coping with the coronavirus outbreak in the budget year starting Oct. 1. Read more.

Pamela Rush Fought for Environmental Justice Before Being Felled by the Coronavirus

Pamela Sue Rush, a resident of Lowndes County, died July 3 from complications related to COVID-19. Rush, 49, was a mother to a 12-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. She also was a well-known activist who fought against injustice in poverty-stricken areas. Before she became ill, Rush spent the last two years of her life fighting for the poverty-stricken and those affected by systemic racism. She personally had been the victim of a predatory lender who charged her “almost 4 times the value” for her Lowndes County mobile home, which was dilapidated and surrounded by sewage drainage. Read more. More of Not Forgotten: Alabama’s COVID Dead

Albert Trousdale’s Son Points COVID-19 Skeptics to a Tombstone

The First Person Known to Die in Alabama After Contracting COVID-19 Never Let Her Disability Define Her

Alabama Shows Increase in COVID-19 Cases

Although the states cases of COVID-19 have been declining the past couple of weeks, the numbers have been rising again for the past few days. The Alabama Department of Public Health this morning reported 579 new cases of the disease since Friday afternoon. That’s after an increase of 1,183 cases on Friday. The department initially reported a much lower number of cases on Friday, 321. But later in the day, it reported that the number was artificially low because of problems processing the data. The total number of confirmed cases in the state is 109,566. Read more.

U.S. Surgeon General Helps Announce Three New COVID Testing Sites in Greater Birmingham

America’s top doctor was at the Riverchase Galleria today to repeat a common theme, that reducing cases of COVID-19 is a responsibility shared by everyone. “The way we do it faithfully is by lowering transmission and we lower transmission with the three W's: Wear a mask, wash your hands, watch your distance,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said. “But we also do it by knowing who's positive so we can isolate and contact trace." Residents of central Alabama have a new tool in their effort to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus with the opening of surge testing sites that are equipped to test 1,500 people per day through Sept. 5. Those sites are the Sears parking lot at the Galleria in Hoover and Cathedral of the Cross in Center Point. Additionally, a third surge testing site will be at the Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service Training and Logistics Center in Tuscaloosa. Read more.