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For the first time in Alabama’s known history, the state recorded more deaths than births in 2020 – a grim milestone that underscores the pandemic’s calamitous toll.
“Our state has literally shrunk in 2020,” Alabama public health chief Dr. Scott Harris said at a press conference on Friday. There were 64,714 total deaths in the state last year, up from 57,641 births, Dr Harris said.
Such a gap had never been recorded, not even during WWI, WWII and the 1918 influenza pandemic, Dr Harris said. Going back to the earliest records available, in 1900, “we never had a time when deaths exceeded births,” he said.
Nationally, the birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, and some experts say the pandemic could accelerate that trend. A University of New Hampshire study found that half of America’s 50 states had more deaths than births in 2020, compared with just five states that had more deaths than births in 2019.
In Alabama last year, 7,182 deaths were officially attributed to Covid, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health.
In a town hall discussion with Al.com, Alabama’s largest digital news site, on Wednesday, Dr Harris dismissed arguments that Covid deaths were distorted.
“We have skeptical people who say, ‘Well, these were just old people who were going to die anyway, and you just attribute their deaths to Covid,'” he said. “This is not the case.”
Alabama recently averaged about 60 deaths per day, according to a New York Times database, and only 41% of the state’s eligible population is fully vaccinated.
Alabama’s full vaccination rate is on par with Idaho’s, tied as the third-lowest rate in the country. The two lowest ranked are Wyoming and West Virginia.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey urged the people of her state to get vaccinated against Covid, but like many other Republicans, she objected when President Biden recently announced vaccination warrants, calling them of “scandalous” and “exaggerated”.
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