COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama | |
---|---|
Disease | COVID-19 |
Virus strain | SARS-CoV-2 |
Location | Alabama, U.S. |
Index case | Montgomery County |
Arrival date | March 13, 2020 |
Confirmed cases | 191,408 [1] |
Suspected cases‡ | 36,965 |
Hospitalized cases | 1,575 (current) 23,449 (cumulative) |
Critical cases | 1,211 (cumulative) |
Ventilator cases | 654 (cumulative) |
Recovered | 90,702 |
Deaths | 3,148 (confirmed) 303 (probable) |
Government website | |
Alabama Department of Public Health | |
‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out. |
Part of a series on the |
COVID-19 pandemic |
---|
![]() |
|
![]() |
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of Alabama in March 2020. As of January 10, 2022, the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADHP) reported nearly a million confirmed cases of COVID-19 (or 1 in 5 people) and 16,630 confirmed deaths. At 330 deaths per 100,000 Alabama has the highest death rate in the US along with Mississippi. [2] [3]
As of February 8,2021 [update] , Alabama has administered 473,199 COVID-19 vaccine doses, equivalent to 9.59% of the population. [4]
On January 22, the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) asked healthcare providers to conduct screening of patients seeking care for influenza-like illnesses with travel to Wuhan, China, and said the "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to believe the risk of 2019-nCoV to the American public at large remains low at this time." [5]
On February 4, the Alabama Department of Public Health asked travelers to mainland China who returned to the United States on or after January 22, 2020, to contact the Infectious Diseases and Outbreaks Division as soon as they arrive in Alabama. [6] On the same day, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey delivered the "State of the State" address, with no mention of COVID-19. [7] [8]
On February 21, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that an Anniston facility would be used as a COVID-19 quarantine center; those plans were cancelled two days later. [9] [10]
On February 28, the Alabama Department of Public Health recommended individuals protect themselves from COVID-19 by getting a flu shot and "other normal precautions". [11]
On March 2, the Alabama Department of Public Health advised individuals to "wash your hands frequently, avoid touching your face, cover coughs and sneezes, stay home when you are ill, and practice social distancing strategies". ADPH also asked universities and colleges to implement plans to mitigate the spread of disease on their campuses. [12] On March 5, the Alabama Department of Public Health announced state laboratory capability of COVID-19 testing and criteria for testing eligibility. [13] March 6 saw the formation of the Alabama Coronavirus task force. [14] Governor Ivey said: "There's no need to panic or close huge events right now." She asked Alabamians to wash hands, cover coughs, and fist bump instead of shaking hands. [15]
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2020) |
On March 13, Alabama announced its first known cases of coronavirus in a person who had recently traveled from Illinois, and by the end of the day the state reported six cases total. [16] [17] [18] That same day, Governor Ivey declared a state of emergency due to the spread of the coronavirus, and announced that all schools would be closed from March 18 until April 6. [19] [20]
On March 15, Gov. Ivey authorized state agency directors to implement work from home and flexible work schedules. [21] On March 16, the Alabama Department of Public Health announced recommendations concerning public gatherings, food establishment and other retail venues, and businesses, including no gatherings of 50 or more person. [22]
On March 18, a statewide health order prohibited all non-work related gatherings of 25+ persons or any non-work related gatherings that cannot maintain consistent six-foot spacing between people. [23] [24] Public and private beaches closed. [25] Alabama's Primary Runoff Election was postponed to July 14. [26]
On March 20, Gov. Ivey authorized up to 100 Alabama National Guard members to assist with response "if it becomes necessary". [27] The Alabama Department of Public Health refined guidance on public gatherings. [28] Auburn University announced postponement of its spring graduation ceremony and a move to fully online classes after spring break. [29]
On March 24, Birmingham issued a stay-at-home order (as a 24-hour curfew) effective through April 3. [30] The first death in the state was reported in Jackson County. [31] Tuscaloosa city mayor Walt Maddox issued a city-wide curfew, lasting from 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. each day, effective March 27 to April 3. [32]
At a March 26 press conference, Ivey said she would not issue a shelter-in-place order, saying "... we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California ... right now is not the time to order people to shelter in place." [33] Tuscaloosa extended its city-wide curfew to 24 hours, beginning March 29 at 10:00 p.m., set to last an additional week. The Tuscaloosa stay-at-home order (the second in the state) came after Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall's opinion published on the same day that provided cities and counties with more authority to combat the pandemic. [34]
On March 27, all "non-essential businesses" in the state were ordered to be closed until April 17, including barbershops, furniture stores, gyms, casinos, theaters, arcades, night clubs, salons and spas. ABC stores would remain open. Governor Ivey again refused to issue a state-wide shelter-in-place order, saying "I have the responsibility to look statewide and in this case, one size does not fit all" and that she has to "keep an eye on the economy"; she added that she would not object to county and city-level containment efforts. [35] Montgomery mayor Steven Reed enacted an indefinite, 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew beginning on March 27. [36]
The Alabama Department of Labor reported that 59,783 people filed for unemployment from March 22 to March 26, a five-fold growth over the previous week. [37]
Archbishop Thomas John Rodi of the Archdiocese of Mobile and Bishop Robert Joseph Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham continued the suspension of public Mass in Alabama through April 18, meaning no Easter Sunday Mass on April 12, in what Rodi called a "painful decision". Baker and Rodi initially issued the suspension of public Mass on March 17. [38]
By March 28, the virus was confirmed in at least six nursing homes in the state. [39] Governor Ivey announced on the 28th that Apple donated 63,000 N95 masks for Alabama healthcare providers. [40]
Residents in the Opelika area were holding a "Park and Pray" service twice daily in support of the hospital staff at the East Alabama Medical Center, at the time the only hospital reporting COVID-19 deaths. [41] [42]
Alabama was projected by models on April 2 to have the fourth-highest rate of COVID-19 fatalities in the nation. [43] In response, Ivey ordered a fifth Supplemental State of Emergency (the third was on March 23 and the fourth was on March 27) to reduce red tape for healthcare providers, including allowing certified registered nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physician assistants, and anesthesia assistants to practice in a licensed health care facility. She also ordered the state board to adopt emergency rules to allow expedited reinstatement of medical licenses; moved to expand the capacity of health care facilities, and moved to allow local jails to release probation or parole violators who have been in custody for more than 20 days without a hearing. [44]
It was reported that every day since March 23, the ADPH was sharing a list of addresses of confirmed COVID-19 patients with the Alabama 911 Board to disseminate to local 911 response districts, reportedly to protect first responders from becoming infected—a possible breach of patient confidentiality law. Massachusetts was the only other state known to be doing this at the time. The 911 Board said the policy was implemented after numerous state agencies expressed concerns about protecting first responders. [45]
On April 3, Ivey issued a statewide stay-at-home order until April 30. [46] Mobile followed suit with an order effective until April 30. [47]
Also on April 3, Ivey issued a proclamation that granted temporary protection from enforcement of evictions and foreclosures, but that order expired on June 1. [48] [49] [50]
Montgomery County authorities reported that they received 5,880 surgical masks from the Strategic National Stockpile with a 2010 expiration date; the masks reportedly had dry rot and were useless. [51]
By the morning of April 18, according to the ADPH, there were 146 reported deaths, 113 confirmed deaths, more than 4,600 confirmed cases, with 42,500 people tested. [52] On April 19, the National Guard did its first nursing home disinfect and decontamination process for COVID-19. [53]
In early June, the Alabama Department of Public Health dashboard under-reported new cases. On June 4, they claimed, "the national surveillance pipeline is becoming overwhelmed," by a large increase in test results. On June 6, they claimed, "As a result of a reporting backlog, this dashboard appears to display sizeable increases in all numbers." [54] In late May, the caseload had been growing at an average of 3% per day. The cases posted on June 7 did not make up the difference unless there had been a decline in growth as state businesses opened in May.
At least five University of Alabama football players tested positive for COVID-19. [55]
On June 16, 2020, the city council of Montgomery controversially voted 4–4 on an ordinance to require that masks be worn in public gatherings of 25 people or more. The next day, by the advice of health officials, Mayor Steven Reed overruled the tie vote and enacted the mandate via executive order. [56]
By June 24, 2020, there were 31,624 cases and 879 deaths.
On July 15, Governor Ivey announced that face masks would be mandatory state-wide in public spaces when within six feet of a person from another household, beginning July 16 at 5:00 p.m. local time. This is an amendment to the Safer at Home order. [57]
Classes resumed at the University of Alabama on August 17, and 566 cases were reported at the different campuses on August 24. The university offered a hybrid of online and in-person classes. Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox closed bars for two weeks in response. [58]
Governor Kay Ivey extended a mandatory mask order to January 22 as the state hits a record 2,000 hospitalizations and 3,395 new infections on December 8. The state has a total 280,000 proven and probable cases and 4,000 virus-related deaths. [59]
As Alabama was one of five U.S. states with less than 35% of its population vaccinated, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, predicted the state was at risk for outbreaks of the Delta variant. [60]
On March 12, the National Collegiate Athletic Association canceled all winter and spring tournaments, most notably the Division I men's and women's basketball tournaments, affecting colleges and universities statewide. [61] On March 16, the National Junior College Athletic Association also canceled the remainder of the winter seasons as well as the spring seasons. [62]
The 2021 World Games in Birmingham, originally scheduled for July 15–25, 2021, was postponed to July 7–17, 2022. [63]
Alabama Crimson Tide football head coach Nick Saban and his Nick's Kids Foundation donated to food banks, contributed to the 211 program, provided meals to DCH Regional Medical Center workers, and filmed PSAs. [64]
The debut of the Minor League Baseball team, the Rocket City Trash Pandas, was scheduled for April 9, 2020, but was postponed indefinitely. On June 30, MILB announced that the 2020 season would not be played. [65]
The NTT IndyCar Series was scheduled to race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham on April 5, but on March 16 the race was cancelled for the 2020 season only.
NASCAR Race Weekended at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega was scheduled to race on April 24–26 but was reschedule to June 19–21. NASCAR also made a second race in the fall at the track for the Xfinity Series. It has not been decided yet if fans can attend the fall race weekend or not (Fan were allowed to attend the fall race), the Cup Series spring race in June was allowed to have a limited number of spectators at the track.
On March 22, Mobicon, an annual fan convention held in Mobile announced that the 2020 iteration of the convention scheduled for the last weekend of May had been postponed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. [66]
![]() | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
Kay Ellen Ivey is an American politician who is the 54th governor of Alabama, serving since 2017. Originally a conservative Southern Democrat, Ivey became a member of the Republican Party in 2002. She was the 38th Alabama state treasurer from 2003 to 2011 and the 30th lieutenant governor of Alabama from 2011 to 2017.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts was part of a pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The first confirmed case was reported on February 1, 2020, and the number of cases began increasing rapidly on March 5. Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency on March 10. By March 12, more than a hundred people had tested positive for the virus. Massachusetts experienced a first wave of COVID-19 that peaked in late April 2020, with almost 4,000 people hospitalized with the disease, and a rolling seven-day average of 2,300 new confirmed cases and 175 confirmed deaths a day. A second wave began in the autumn of the same year and peaked in January 2021, seeing higher daily case numbers but fewer deaths and hospitalizations than the first wave. There was a smaller third spike of increased cases and hospitalizations in March and April 2021, which resulted in significantly fewer deaths than the first two waves. A fourth wave began in July and August 2021. Another wave occurred in the winter of 2021 to 2022, coinciding with the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in the state, and exceeding the peak number of cases in any previous wave. As of January 13, 2022, Massachusetts was experiencing a rolling average of 13,314 new confirmed cases and 43 confirmed deaths per day.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of Arizona in January 2020. As of June 3, 2021 Arizona public health authorities reported 322 new cases of COVID-19 and five deaths, bringing the cumulative totals since the start of the pandemic to 882,691 cases and 17,653 deaths. 12.3% of the state's population has been positively diagnosed with COVID-19 since the first case was reported on January 26, 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of Arkansas in March 2020. The first case in Arkansas was reported on March 11, 2020, in Pine Bluff, Jefferson County. As of March 2022, there were 819,984 cumulative cases of COVID-19 with a total of 10,524 deaths.
The first confirmed case of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. state of Connecticut was confirmed on March 8, although there had previously been multiple people suspected of having COVID-19, all of which eventually tested negative. As of January 19, 2022, there were 599,028 confirmed cases, 68,202 suspected cases, and 9,683 COVID-associated deaths in the state.
The COVID-19 pandemic was first detected in the U.S. state of Georgia on March 2, 2020. The state's first death came ten days later on March 12. As of April 17, 2021, there were 868,163 confirmed cases, 60,403 hospitalizations, and 17,214 deaths. All of Georgia's 159 counties now report COVID-19 cases, with Gwinnett County reporting over 85,000 cases and the next three counties now reporting over 56,000 cases each.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky on March 6, 2020, when Governor Andy Beshear's office announced the first confirmed case in Cynthiana, Kentucky, and declared a state of emergency to ensure all entities had the necessary response resources. As of January 1, 2023, 1,667,275 cumulative cases of COVID-19 were confirmed, with 17,694 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic in New Hampshire is part of an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The first confirmed case was reported on March 2, 2020. A state of emergency was declared March 13, which included a ban on gatherings of 50 or more people. A small group filed a lawsuit claiming the order infringed on their right to assemble and worship; a judge dismissed the suit. On March 26, all nonessential businesses were closed and Governor Chris Sununu advised people to only leave home for essential necessities. That stay-at-home order was extended several times before being allowed to expire on June 15. Through November 22, a total of 74 emergency orders had been issued by Sununu. Sununu lifted the mask mandate as of April 16, 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S. state of New Jersey with the first confirmed case occurring in Bergen County on March 2, 2020, and testing positive on March 4. As of January 11, 2022, 1.63 million cases were confirmed in the state, incurring 26,795 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of New Mexico on March 11, 2020. On December 23, 2020, the New Mexico Department of Health reported 1,174 new COVID-19 cases and 40 deaths, bringing the cumulative statewide totals to 133,242 cases and 2,243 deaths since the start of the pandemic. During the last quarter of 2020, COVID-19 hospitalizations in New Mexico increased, reaching a peak of 947 hospitalizations on December 3.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached the U.S. state of Ohio on March 9, 2020, when the state's first cases were reported. The first death from COVID-19 in Ohio was reported on March 19. Subsequently, records supported by further testing showed that undetected cases had existed in Ohio since early January, with the first confirmed death on March 17. By April 23, Ohio had 656 confirmed deaths; by May 1, there were 1,002 confirmed deaths. Accurate data was difficult to obtain due to limited test availability. By December 12, a total of 553,461 cases had been reported leading to 31,803 hospitalizations and 7,477 deaths.
The COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S. state of Utah in early March 2020 with travel-related cases. Residents stockpiled goods, large conferences were made remote-only, postponed, or cancelled; a state of emergency was declared, and some public universities and other colleges switched to online-only classes. After the first case of community spread was found on March 14, Utah faced a shortage of testing kits, and public schools were ordered to be closed. Community spread was confirmed in more counties, and the state issued a public health order prohibiting dine-in service in restaurants and gatherings of more than 10 people except in grocery stores. A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck the Wasatch Front on March 18, 2020, hampering the pandemic response.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico was an ongoing viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is part of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The first case relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in Idaho was confirmed on March 13, 2020, when a Boise woman tested positive. As of February 15, 2023, there have been 517,540 confirmed cases and 5,389 deaths within Idaho, while 975,583 people have been fully vaccinated.
The COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S. state of Mississippi in March 2020.
State, territorial, tribal, and local governments responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States with various declarations of emergency, closure of schools and public meeting places, lockdowns, and other restrictions intended to slow the progression of the virus.
The U.S. state of West Virginia reported its first confirmed case relating to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 17, 2020, becoming the last state to do so. The patient had shown symptoms for several days prior. On March 29, 2020, the state reported its first COVID-19 death.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States during 2020.
On March 17, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was reported to have reached the Navajo Nation. The virus then spread rapidly through the Navajo Nation to the point that the Navajo, in 2020, had a higher per capita rate of infection than any state of the United States. The population according to the 2010 United States census was 173,667. As of September 13, 2022, the number of confirmed cases was 31,571 with 1,893 deaths.
The government of California initially responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in the state with a statewide lockdown, the first of its kind during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. As the pandemic progressed in California and throughout the rest of the country, the California government, following recommendations issued by the U.S. government regarding state and local government responses, began imposing social distancing measures and workplace hazard controls.