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According to Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, 26 children are currently being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals in Alabama.
This is an increase from the nine pediatric patients infected with the virus earlier this month, as COVID-related hospitalizations skyrocketed in Alabama in July. Williamson said he is concerned about the rate of new patients of all ages arriving with COVID.
“That’s what’s the scariest thing,” he said. “It’s not the absolute number, it’s the rate of growth of both cases and hospitalizations … We’ve never seen this slope before.”
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Alabama hospitals were treating 1,181 patients for the coronavirus on Wednesday, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health. Williamson said of those, 311 were in intensive care and 109 were on a ventilator.
Williamson also said hospitals across the state were seeing younger patients arriving with COVID.
He said he was using the output information to obtain data on the average age of patients being treated for the virus. This data works with a slight delay – it does not show the ages of people currently hospitalized, but the ages of people leaving the hospital. However, certain trends are emerging.
“It’s a younger population,” he says. “The percentage of people under 35 who leave the hospital has increased. In January, it would have been around 6-7%. Now we are at 16%.
He also said the average age of COVID patients discharged from Alabama hospitals fell from about 64-65 years earlier in the pandemic to 54.
The AHA did not have reliable data on the percentage of hospitalized COVID patients who were not vaccinated, but Williamson said a survey conducted about two weeks ago showed that the vast majority – over 90% – was not vaccinated.
Meanwhile, about 11% of Alabama hospital beds are currently available and 12% of the state’s intensive care beds are available, according to Williamson. But bed capacity and equipment – PPE or ventilators – are not the concern at the moment.
“We don’t have a capacity problem in terms of beds, in terms of ‘stuff’ – our problem is going to be the staff,” he said. “That will be the big limiting factor as we go along.”
Do you have an idea for an Alabama data story? Email Ramsey Archibald at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more stories about Alabama data here.
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