Birmingham hospitals: Most COVID patients are unvaccinated
Hospitals in Birmingham are seeing a surge in COVID-19 patients — usually unvaccinated and often younger — as doctors and administrators pleaded Wednesday for people to get vaccinated. Doctors and administrators at seven Birmingham hospitals participated in a media briefing to discuss the recent surge in cases. The overwhelming majority of current COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, and patients tend to be younger than they were at the start of the pandemic before vaccines were available, the hospital’s officials said. Dr. Elizabeth Ennis, chief medical officer of Brookwood Baptist Health, said the delta variant of the virus is moving like “wildfire” through the state. “What’s different this time is we are seeing much younger people in the hospital,” Ennis said. Vaccination rates have typically been higher in older age groups. Across Alabama, the number of COVID-19 patients in state hospitals jumped from 213 on July 4 to 1,802 on Aug. 4, according to the Alabama Hospital Association. The current hospitalization numbers are far less than the 3,000 COVID-19 patients in state hospitals at the peak of the pandemic in January. However, health officials have expressed concern about the steep upward trend. As of Wednesday, there were 508 patients in state hospitals, compared to 848 on Jan. 12, said Dr. Don Williamson, head of the Alabama Hospital Association. Alabama ranked fifth in the nation for new cases per capita in the past 14 days, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Alabama has risen over the past two weeks from 1,013.71 new cases per day on July 19 to 2,525.71 new cases per day on Aug. 2. People who have been vaccinated can contract the coronavirus, but health officials have said they are far less likely to get seriously ill. Dr. Jeremy Rogers, an emergency room physician and director of clinical services at Grandview Medical Center, said 92% of incoming COVID patients at his facility are unvaccinated, and a majority are under age 60. He said they recently admitted a 19-year-old with COVID. “This is absolutely heartbreaking what we are seeing. It’s tragic. And unfortunately, it’s largely preventable,” Rogers said. “We’ve talked a lot about vaccine hesitancy, but I’ve seen a lot of vaccine regret in patients, in family members that wish they would have been vaccinated sooner. Vaccines are widely available, and so now’s the time to get vaccinated before it’s too late,” Rogers said. Dr. Timothy Bode, chief medical officer at Ascension St. Vincent’s Health System, said 88% of their nearly 100 COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated. He said 93% of COVID-19 patients in critical care units and on ventilators are unvaccinated. Dr. Mark Wilson, health officer for the Jefferson County Department of Health, urged people to get vaccinated and to get back to basics with wearing masks and avoiding crowds. “We are in a big scary surge right now,” Wilson said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Health officer: Face mask requirement may be needed indoors
Cases of COVID-19 are rising exponentially in Alabama’s largest metro area because a new, highly contagious variant is spreading among the unvaccinated, and public places should consider a return to requiring face masks, the head of the area health department said Thursday. Dr. Mark Wilson, the health officer for Jefferson County, said studies have shown that the delta variant that’s taken hold in Alabama can spread between people in less than a minute, so any indoor area where people gather might need a face mask requirement or at least a strong recommendation that people wear them. The seven-day rolling average for new cases of COVID-19 has risen eightfold from 13 to 107 a day, he said, and additional new cases and more deaths linked to the pandemic are inevitable, she said. “The tragic thing is that almost all of these deaths will have been prevented if only those people had been vaccinated,” Wilson said. The problem isn’t isolated to Jefferson County: Only eight of Alabama’s 67 counties aren’t considered at high risk for the illness caused by the coronavirus, and roughly 50 more patients a day are being admitted to state hospitals with COVID-19, which already has killed more than 11,460 people in Alabama. With only 31% of the population fully vaccinated and nearly all the new, most serious cases among people who aren’t inoculated, Wilson said the state’s vaccination rate is “way, way below” what is needed to control the pandemic. Gov. Kay Ivey told reporters Thursday the blame for the new surge in cases is with people who refuse to get vaccinated. “The few cases of COVID are because of unvaccinated folks. Almost 100% of the new hospitalizations are unvaccinated folks. And the deaths certainly are occurring with unvaccinated folks. These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. We’ve got to get folks to take the shot,” Ivey said during an appearance in Birmingham. The governor said she doesn’t like another mask mandate, but she also doesn’t know how to convince more people to get their COVID-19 shots. “Get a shot in your arm. I’ve done it. It’s safe. The data proves it. It doesn’t cost anything. It saves lives,” Ivey said. Cases have surged since the July 4 holiday, which officials feared would lead to new outbreaks, Dr. Scott Harris, the head of the Alabama Department of Public Health, said in a video update released by the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. “Right now we are seeing some pretty difficult times here in Alabama,” Harris said. Some of the infections are occurring after the type of large gatherings that generally didn’t occur until the state lifted health restrictions. Dr. David Thrasher, who practices in Montgomery, said a doctor friend told him about a church in the Birmingham suburb of Trussville that recently held a large celebration for its 200th anniversary which was followed by a massive disease outbreak. “Seventy people in that congregation have tested positive,” he said. Thrasher said a friend of his died recently and two people who attended the funeral became infected even though they were vaccinated. Over the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new cases has increased by 772, a spike of 280%, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University. There were about 226 new cases per 100,000 people in Alabama over the past two weeks, which ranks ninth in the country. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Some vaccine sites operating far below capacity in Alabama
With Alabama struggling to improve its last-in-the-nation vaccination rate for COVID-19, officials say workers at some immunization sites in the state are providing only a fraction of the shots they could give out. A vaccination clinic in its third week of operation in Lauderdale County has provided about 500 doses, but project manager Mike Melton told WAAY-TV the site could easily provide 500 shots a day “if the demand was there.” “I’m not sure if people are worried about long lines we’ve seen historically. You can see here that’s not an issue. Even if we have a bit of a line, it moves so quickly,” said Casey Willis, administrator at North Alabama Medical Center. In metro Birmingham, where a mass vaccination site was set to open Wednesday at an outlet mall, some questioned whether the facility was even needed since so few people have shown up at an immunization site at the Birmingham Crossplex, an indoor sports facility. “I don’t know that the demand is there to warrant another location,” Pauline Long, co-owner of Meds Plus, told WBMA-TV. The station reported that it visited three vaccination locations Tuesday, and none had lines or were requiring appointments. Jefferson County’s top health official, Dr. Mark Wilson, said the county couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bring more vaccine doses to the state’s most populated area. “We’re just trying to make sure vaccine is widely available. This is a new site in a new area, and we’re also trying to serve the larger region,” he said. Multiple Alabama hospitals also have seen a decline in demand for vaccines, said Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association. It’s unclear whether the addition of new immunization sites or low demand are behind the trend, he said, but some hospitals are looking at scaling back vaccination programs. In heavily populated Mobile, USA Health is offering vaccines for the new coronavirus without a wait at the Civic Center. But only about 100 of the city’s 500 police officers have been vaccinated, even though first responders have been a priority for shots, WPMI-TV reported. “You know, I am a little disappointed in the numbers,” said Public Safety Director Lawrence Battiste. Hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 have jumped about 20% in less than two weeks in Alabama, where more than 523,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and almost 10,800 have died. While about 1.4 million in the state have received at least one dose of vaccine, Alabama is last nationally in its rate of immunizing people. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
‘Vaccine is coming’: State urges patience amid slow rollout
Alabama health officials urged patience Wednesday amid a slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations, saying the state plans to soon expand who is eligible to get the shots. The state is in the first phase of its vaccination plan, which prioritizes health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities, about 377,000 altogether. The state has only received 226,000 vaccines so far, however. The next group to receive the vaccines are people over 75 and those considered at advanced risk. No timeline has been established given that the state doesn’t yet have enough vaccines for the first group, but State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said officials expect to expand distribution soon. “The vaccine is coming,” Harris said. “Even though the number of shots in arms is not as great as we would like, we believe most of the reasons for that have been worked out and are behind us. We are going to start adding additional groups of people very soon and will announce that very soon.” Alabama, along with Mississippi, Georgia, Michigan, Kansas, and Arizona, ranks at the bottom for the rate of vaccinations so far, according to numbers compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationwide, the rollout has been slow as states have been left to take care of their own distribution. As of Sunday, Alabama had distributed about 42,000 of its 226,000 shots, or 821 doses per 100,000 residents. Most states have reached more than 1,000 per 100,000 residents, but few have topped 2,000. Some health workers who have been eligible for the vaccine have not taken it. Jefferson County State Health Officer Dr. Mark Wilson said anecdotal evidence suggests that almost 100% of eligible physicians have taken the vaccine in the first round but as many as half of other health care workers have not yet done so, either by choice or because of logistical issues. Harris said one of the reasons for the slow vaccine distribution is that the state only has 15 sites that can provide the extremely cold storage required for the Pfizer vaccine. Jefferson County has started a hotline to let people know who is eligible for the vaccine and that lets them sign up for text alerts about increased availability, Wilson said. “We do need people to be patient,” he said. “It’s going to take a while to work through this. Some people are going to struggle with not understanding why it is not their turn because a lot of them have a very good reason to get vaccinated, there’s no doubt.” Harris said in December that the state expects to get to the 75 and older group this month and will not sit on vaccines. In the meantime, state health officials have cautioned people to continue precautions to prevent infection with the coronavirus, as it will likely be spring or summer before the vaccine is available to those who aren’t at increased risk. “We just hope people will understand that there is just not going to be enough to go around for several more months,” Harris said. At least one county, Calhoun County, has been allowed to start vaccinations of people over age 75 who live in that county. Harris said individual counties that have available vaccine have the flexibility to decide to expand their coverage if supplies allow. WBRC reported about 900 people in the county got the shots Tuesday. The Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency said it had to cut the line off Wednesday morning because of the number of people waiting. “I was just thanking God that I’m able to get this today and get it as soon as I could,” Joyce Nix told the television station. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Kay Ivey extends pandemic rule requiring face masks
The five-week extension, announced during a Capitol news conference, means the mask requirement will be in effect on Election Day and through much of the remaining high school and college football seasons.
Alabama lifts pandemic restriction on bar hours
Originally intended to keep down crowds and encourage social distancing, the rule also reduced revenues and limited tips for servers.
Alabama virus cases up, Kay Ivey stresses personal responsibility
The state hit records highs this past week for hospitalizations.
More than 450 Alabama health care workers have been infected
Alabama reached nearly 3,000 confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday.
Governor’s office: ‘Shelter-in-place’ order not needed yet
A spokeswoman for Ivey said the governor has not ruled anything out.
Alabama unemployment claims skyrocket amid pandemic
Health officials have acknowledged the economic cost of mandatory closures.
State virus cases at 157; closures ordered in Jefferson Co.
Clothing stores, barber shops, gyms, hair salons and department stores are among those that should close beginning at 5 p.m. Monday.
State orders closures in some counties due to coronavirus
The Alabama Department of Public Health closed day care and senior centers in six counties.
