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With the lowest vaccination rates in the county, many people in the Deep South remain at risk. Read more.

The good news for Alabama on the COVID-19 front is that the numbers of new cases and deaths continue to stay near record-low levels.

The bad news is that vaccination rates are way behind most of the rest of the United States.

In BirminghamWatch’s periodic analysis of the state’s COVID numbers, the percentage of Alabamians who have received their full vaccine regimen — a single injection for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, two for Pfizer and Moderna — is currently at 29.8%, according to the Johns Hopkins University rankings. That rate is the second-lowest among the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, with only neighboring Mississippi (27.2%) trailing Alabama.

As of Tuesday, 1,481,073 state residents had the full dosage, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health, with 1,797,291 people getting at least one shot. Read more.

A professor from the UAB School of Public Health urged people who are on the fence when it comes to getting the COVID-19 vaccine to “jump off (and) give it a try.”

“We’ve got millions of people that have been vaccinated with very few side effects,” Dr. Suzanne Judd said Thursday during a Zoom question-and-answer session with the media. “The most important thing is this pandemic could turn again in the fall, and you want to be on the side of being vaccinated if that virus starts circulating rapidly again.”

She said the state may have dodged a bullet in terms of a COVID surge following Memorial Day, but there could be trouble ahead when Labor Day comes around if more people don’t get vaccinated.
Read more.

UAB public health officials are encouraging everyone eligible to get vaccinated for COVID-19 as it sees an increase in hospitalizations in the aftermath of Memorial Day. Read more.

Close to 70% of Alabamians are still not fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but many people have stopped wearing masks and returned to normal activities. Read more.

The three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend saw little change in Alabama’s COVID-19 data, with averages staying near lows not seen since the early days of the pandemic.

In BirminghamWatch’s periodic analysis of COVID data, the 7-day moving average of new cases reported by the Alabama Department of Public Health on Thursday stands at 264.43 per day, which is the lowest that average has been since May 6, 2020. The 14-day average was nearly the same as the short-term mark at 271.29, its best level since May 13 of last year. The 7-day average has dropped from 278.14 a week ago; the 14-day average was not available last week due to a large influx of old, unreported cases that distorted new-case numbers over mid-May.

The total caseload from the start of the pandemic is now at 545,028, or 10.9% of the state population of 5.03 million as measured in the 2020 Census.
Read more.