The Alabama Department of Health has announced alarming death rate numbers for Alabama’s older population. According to the Department of Health, 1 in 9 Alabamians age 65 and older who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 has died.
Governor Kay Ivey held a press conference Tuesday, where she extended Alabama’s Safer at Home order until at least July 31. During the meeting, Ivey did not issue a mandatory mask requirement.
Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris stated, “About three-quarters of all of [Alabama’s] deaths have occurred in our seniors, even though they’re only about 17% of our cases. If you do that math, that works out to seniors who are infected with this disease have about a 1-in-9 chance of not surviving. And that’s a tragedy.” Dr. Harris stressed that social distancing and masks would help slow the rising rate of deaths and stop the spread of the virus.
Harris went on to state, “Even though we’re testing more, we’re finding a greater percentage of people who are positive, and that means we know that we have increasing transmission going on in the community.”
As of June 30, the ADHP Dashboard is showing 37,500 cases. Additionally, 926 deaths have been reported from COVID-19, of which 726, or 78%, were people aged 65 or older.
This rate is not too far off the national COVID-19 mortality rates. As reported by Business Insider, the national mortality rate ranges from 10.4 percent in the 65-74 age range to as high as 30.1 percent for those ages 85 and over.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 8 out of 10 Covid-19 deaths have been people ages 65 or older. A recent CDC analysis concluded, “That 45.4% of U.S. adults are at increased risk for complications from coronavirus disease because of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease, hypertension, or cancer.” People at elevated risk include 19.8% of people age 18 to 29 and 80.7% for people over age 80.
