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The Alabama Department of Public Health reported 3,376 new coronavirus cases and 60 virus deaths on Tuesday, but some of those cases and deaths are old.
“The number of cases and deaths reported in today’s update are high,” the ADPH coronavirus dashboard read Tuesday. “Today’s increase represents a delay in reporting to the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) due to the holiday weekend.”
The new number brings the state’s 7-day average for newly reported cases to 2,291 – just one daily case below the all-time high set on Thanksgiving Day.
[Can’t see the chart? Click here.]
While the backlog mainly consists of weekend cases, that shouldn’t affect the state’s 7-day average much. If anything, that probably corrects what was an artificially low running average. The state added just 917 cases on Nov. 27, well below the current average and the first time Alabama has added less than 1,000 new cases in one day in nearly a month.
Tuesday’s number represents the second highest total of cases ever added in a day – an earlier backlog in October saw 3,852 cases entering the system at once. Arrears like this have been common in Alabama since the start of the pandemic. According to ADPH, Tuesday’s particular batch of old numbers came from labs that did not report positive tests or deaths over the Thanksgiving long weekend.
The state’s current positivity rate, based on the 7-day average for new cases and the 7-day average for new tests, is the highest in months, at nearly 33%. It is not known how the backlog of data affects this number, but if negative tests from the same period have been reported in the backlog, the positivity rate should not be affected.
The 60 deaths reported on Tuesday equal the second-highest daily total since November 19. That number also includes old data – the state had only reported six new deaths in the past four days, and none on Friday or Saturday. Data on the date of death shows that Tuesday’s figures include deaths as far back as July 27.
Most of the deaths reported Tuesday were from Baldwin County on the coast – 39 deaths were reported there on Tuesday, bringing its total to 137.
Meanwhile, Jefferson County, the state’s most populous county, added a record number of new cases on Tuesday, although it is not known how many were old. The state reported 462 new cases in Jefferson on Tuesday, bringing its total to 33,527 cases since the start of the pandemic. On November 27, the day the backlog cases appear to come mainly from, Jefferson added just 135 cases – significantly below his current 7-day average of 355 new cases per day.
You can see how many new cases and deaths each county in Alabama has added 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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