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The Alabama Department of Public Health reported 3,531 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, the third day in a row at least 3,000 cases were added in a 24-hour period. Before this week, it had only happened once.
The high numbers for Tuesday and Wednesday included overdue Thanksgiving Day cases, but Thursday’s total does not appear to include older test results. If there are no old cases, Thursday’s total would be the highest the state has ever seen in a day without a backlog.
And the state is still breaking records for current viral hospitalizations – it reported more than 1,800 patients currently hospitalized with the virus for the first time on Wednesday. And Alabama’s 7-day positivity rate remains one of the highest in the country.
Thursday’s high number of cases also comes with additional testing. The state reported more than 12,400 tests on Thursday, the highest daily total since November 19. But nearly 35% of tests in the past seven days have come back positive here, the sixth highest rate in the country. In Idaho, the state with the highest positivity rate, nearly half of all tests given come back positive.
The ADPH also reported 65 deaths on Thursday – the third day in a row with at least 60 deaths entering the system. Alabama virus numbers look much worse than they were just three days ago – the state has added nearly 11,000 cases and 200 deaths to its total during that time. As of March, Alabama has now reported more than 260,000 cases of the virus and nearly 3,800 virus deaths.
Bolstered by both high numbers and lagging data, Alabama’s 7-day average for new cases has never been higher. It currently stands at 2,629 – nearly 130 more cases than the previous record set on Wednesday, and more than 700 daily cases above the state’s peaks in July.
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That number is partially inflated due to arrears after the long holiday weekend, but even without them it would still be higher than ever. Wednesday’s backlog added just 700 cases, according to ADHD, so the state would have added more than 3,000 more cases, which would have been a first in days without old data.
But looking at the cases alone is not enough to assess the current situation in Alabama, especially with the problem of old data entering the system.
In some countries, the positivity rate for COVID-19 tests is well over 35%.
[Can’t see the map? Click here.]
Nine of Alabama’s 67 counties currently have 7-day positivity rates above 50%, most in the northern half of the state. None is higher than Fayette County, which is to the west of Birmingham.
The 7-day positivity rate in Fayette County is almost 64%. Only about 24 tests per day have been reported to Fayette in the past 7 days, but 15 per day have come back positive during that time. And that number doesn’t appear to be skewed by a large influx of older cases – the 7-day average there has been relatively stable in recent weeks.
Who adds the most cases?
Jefferson County, the most populous county in the state, continues to add many new cases of the virus. He added 502 cases on Thursday, the most in the state. In the first three days of December alone, nearly 1,700 cases were reported in Jefferson County alone. The current average of 415 cases per day over 7 days is the highest any county in Alabama has seen since the start of the pandemic.
Madison County, home of Huntsville, also adds many cases. 290 new cases of the virus were reported there Thursday, the second in Alabama. The 7-day average is around 179 daily cases, which is also the second highest in the state.
17 of the 65 new deaths reported Thursday were in Tuscaloosa County – no other county added more than five. Most of the deaths reported on Thursday were recent, according to death date data, but some were reported as far back as April.
You can see the number of new cases and deaths added by each county in the table below:
[Can’t see the table? Click here.]
Do you have an idea for a data story on Alabama? Email Ramsey Archibald at [email protected]and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.
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