Science

Alabama Won’t Require Masks, Social Distancing at K-12 Schools

MONTGOMERY — State Superintendent Eric Mackey on Friday said there will be no push from the state department to require students or staff to wear masks when schools resume next month. Mackey told Alabama Daily News it will be up to local schools to approach mask-wearing and social distancing. “Local school districts have the authority if they want to do something with requirements, but we are not going to do any guidance from the state level on that,” Mackey said. Read more.

by Caroline Beck, Alabama Daily News

Counties at Very High Risk of COVID Spread Quadruples in 2 Weeks

The number of Alabama counties listed as being at “very high risk” for the spread of COVID-19 has quadrupled in the past two weeks, the state Department of Public Health reported Thursday. ADPH listed six counties in its highest level of risk in its weekly report on June 24, but that total rose to 21 on July 1 and to 26 this week. Read more.

by Glenn Stephens

With COVID Cases on the Rise, Health Officials Say They’re Seeing Last Year’s Pattern Repeat Itself

Health officials warned Wednesday that Alabama may be headed toward an explosion in the number of COVID-19 cases, similar to the pattern last year when there were thousands of new cases every day. The state has averaged 275 new cases a day over the past week, compared with 153 new cases per day two weeks ago. Jefferson County’s increase is even greater, with cases doubling from 90 in mid June to 190 last week. Read more.

by Glenn Stephens

Committee to Analyze State’s Response to COVID-19

MONTGOMERY -- A new joint legislative committee responsible for analyzing how the state responded to the COVID-19 pandemic -- and help it prepare for future emergencies -- met for the first time on Thursday. “This is a fact-finding, not a fault-finding committee,” Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, said. He's a co-chair of the Alabama Pandemic Response and Preparedness Committee, which includes many of the state's top leaders and will put together a report on lessons learned in the last 15 months. “The goal of this commission is to move forward,” Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed, R-Jasper, said.  “We don’t need to throw rocks about what we maybe should have done, or could have done, or what we did." Read more.

by Caroline Beck, Alabama Daily News

UAB And JeffCo Officials Plan Hospital-Based Intervention Program For Gunshot Survivors

Trauma doctors in Birmingham are treating a record number of patients with gunshot wounds. Health officials hope a violence intervention program could help reverse the trend. Read more.

by Mary Scott Hodgin, WBHM

COVID-19 Cases Rising Again in Alabama

The number of cases of COVID-19 in Alabama has risen steadily over the past week as the state’s vaccination rate remains among the lowest in the nation. The state averaged 227 new cases a day for the week that ended Wednesday, up from an average of 153 a day one week earlier. The Alabama Department of Public Health reported a total of 550,451 cases since the pandemic began in March 2020. Read more.

by Glenn Stephens

Lagging Vaccination Rates, Rising Delta Strain: How Gulf States Are Handling Latest COVID Concerns

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

by Shalina Chatlani, Gulf States Newsroom

Number of COVID Cases Down, but Alabama’s Vaccination Rate Continues to Lag

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.

by Robert Carter

Children’s Well-Being in Alabama Improves but Still Lags Behind the Country

More of Alabama’s children have health insurance and are graduating high school on time, but many of them need more support in key areas such as math skills. Alabama ranks 47th in the nation for children’s well-being, according to the 2021 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each year, the report tracks challenges facing kids and their families in all 50 states. It uses 16 indicators ranked across four areas, including health, education, economic well-being and family and community. Alabama has generally improved over the last couple evaluations, making the top five in 2019 for children graduating on time and children with health insurance. The state has also improved or stayed the same in 14 of 16 indicators, but is still falling behind the rest of the country. Alabama ranked lowest in the country for eighth-grade math proficiency, and the state performed worse on several health indicators. It saw more babies born with low birth-weights, and child and teen deaths increased from 37 in 2018 to 41 in 2019. Read more.

by Kyra Miles, Report for America Corps for WBHM

Extra Unemployment Benefits Ended Saturday

As of Saturday, Alabama’s unemployed workers will no longer receive extra federally funded benefits put in place to help people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. Kay Ivey last month announced she was withdrawing the state from those programs effective June 19. Read more about her reasons and the effects on the unemployed in BirminghamWatch’s original reporting. Governor Shuts Down Extra Help for the Unemployed, Says Workers Needed to Invigorate the Economy

by BirminghamWatch