June 6, 2021 - Frank’s Alabama COVID Newsletter

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2021-06-06 23:00:04

After my last letter to you on Wednesday, Alabama endured 2 successive days of high new daily cases - 430 on Thursday and 557 more on Friday. The 7-day moving average through Friday is 311 cases per day (ADPH did not report on Saturday). That is a 26% increase in new daily cases compared to the prior week. In contrast, for the same period, the national average of new daily cases declined 30% compared to the prior week.

Mercifully, despite the State’s increased infection rate, our Covid-related hospitalization rate actually fell 10.8% compared to the prior week. As of Friday, there were 237 patients in 101 reporting hospitals, a rate of 2.35 patients per hospital, which is an 8% decline compared to the prior week. My initial instinct was that most of the new cases must involve younger people with milder cases. But, a new study released by the CDC yesterday casts doubt on the conclusion that younger patients necessarily mean milder cases.

The nationwide study, conducted in March and April of 2021, revealed that hospitalizations among adolescents aged 12-17 peaked at 2.1 per 100K in early January, declined to 0.6 per 100K in mid-March and then rose to 1.3 in April. Among hospitalized adolescents, nearly 1/3 required intensive care unit admission, and 5% required invasive mechanical ventilation; no associated deaths occurred. In an interview, CDC chief Rachel Walensky was startled by the study’s finding that so many adolescents were admitted to ICU’s, prompting her to plead for adolescents to get vaccinated. So far, in Alabama, only 5% of adolescents aged 12-17 have been vaccinated, lowest in the nation and less than 1/5 of the 26% national average (according to the NY Times).

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