The Alabama Department of Public Health is recommending individuals with weakened immune systems get a third COVID-19 shot to protect against serious illness. The ADPH is not currently recommending booster vaccine doses for the general public and said a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine is for “people in whom the initial response
MONTGOMERY — A meeting of the joint legislative committee analyzing how the state responded to the COVID-19 pandemic has been delayed over concerns of rising case numbers. The in-person meeting was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but committee co-chair Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, told Alabama Daily News it was delayed until Aug. 25. “It seemed questionable
Dr. David Hicks didn’t say fans of high school football should steer clear of Friday night lights when he spoke at Birmingham City Hall this morning. But the deputy health officer of Jefferson County said high school football games — which kick off fully this week — and similarly populated events have an obvious risk
A $147 million program to test kindergarten through 12-grade students for COVID in Alabama’s public and private schools is to begin within a few weeks, UAB, education and health officials said Monday. Schools will test asymptomatic teachers, staff and students over age 12, with parental permission. Officials will use rapid antigen testing for quick results.
Gov. Kay Ivey issued an emergency order Friday to give hospitals and other facilities more flexibility in treating the rapidly growing number of COVID-19 patients overwhelming Alabama’s health care system. Read more.
• New COVID-19 Emergency Order Gives Hospitals More Flexibility The vice president for clinical resources at UAB Hospital summed up the crisis that faces her facility and many others across Alabama in four words: “We’re in dire circumstances.” Dr. Sarah Nafziger’s comment came during one of two online conferences held by top health officials on Thursday, as they struggled to grasp the magnitude of the current surge in COVID cases fueled by the spread of the mutation known as the Delta variant. Hospitals are facing a huge influx of patients, roughly 90% of whom have not been vaccinated for the virus. That is stretching capacities to their limits and threatens to surpass the numbers from the winter surge. All that comes on top of the existing higher-than-normal caseloads from those who had previously put off procedures for treating cancer, strokes, physical injuries and the like, many of which had been delayed for months because of COVID patient needs in the winter. Read more.
The number of COVID deaths and cases in Alabama continues to climb daily, with the majority of victims being people who did not get vaccinated. Of the 11,600-plus deaths from COVID in the state, only 26 were of people who were fully vaccinated, state Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said this week. The Alabama Department of Public Health reported 4,167 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursdsay, leaving the state with an average of 3,469 new cases a day over the past week. There have been 623,919 cases since the pandemic began in March 2020. ADPH added 35 deaths from COVID in its daily report Thursday, bringing the state’s seven-day average to 21 a day. There have been 11,724 deaths in the state through the course of the pandemic. Read more.
It’s official now. The number of daily new cases of COVID-19 in Alabama is back into the same range as it was in January, which was the height of the pandemic thus far. In the Birmingham Watch periodic analysis of COVID data from the Alabama Department of Public Health, the total number of cases from the beginning of the outbreak last year stood at 619,752 through Wednesday. That’s an increase of 3,851 from Tuesday, and 23,936 new infections over the past seven days. The 7-day moving average reached 3,419.43, the highest level since Jan. 15. It has climbed from a low of 121.0 five weeks ago, a 28-fold jump in that timeframe. The longer-term 14-day average crossed the 3,000-case threshold to stand at 3,020.64, which is 18½ times the lowest level from July. The number of hospitalized COVID patients is also rising to alarming levels, resulting in a shortage of beds available for more routine procedures. Wednesday’s ADPH report showed 2,371 hospital beds across the state were occupied by COVID inpatients. Read more.
Scheduling problems between the City Council and mayor’s office have slowed Birmingham’s efforts to spend $74 million in federal relief funding. The city received its money from the American Rescue Plan in May and quickly allocated $17.5 million toward premium pay for city employees who worked through the COVID-19 pandemic. But negotiations over how to spend the rest of the remaining money stalled last month after Mayor Randall Woodfin proposed allocating the money into several different “buckets.” To Woodfin’s obvious frustration, councilors balked, questioning the apparent arbitrariness of those allocations, particularly to public transportation, and delayed the item until a committee of the whole meeting could be convened. That meeting still hasn’t happened. Read more.
Critical care units in Alabama hospitals are nearing capacity due to increasing numbers of COVID-19 patients, but recent deaths from the virus still remain relatively low. State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Friday that about 93% of Alabama’s ICU beds are occupied as the more transmissible COVID-19 delta variant continues to spread in the state and vaccination rates remain low. Read more. Related: Latest COVID Surge Is Putting Pressure on Hospitals Yet Again
