Alabama has just had its worst week for new coronavirus cases.
The Alabama Department of Public Health reported 28,540 new cases during the week ending January 8. That is about 1,600 more cases than the previous record, and almost as many cases as have been reported throughout the month of September.
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Some of the cases reported this week are probably old. A message on the ADPH coronavirus panel said that the state expected data delays due to the Christmas and New Year holidays, and that some cases and deaths that entered the system this week would be from the previous week.
The outbreak of new cases in the week ending January 8 brought Alabama’s 7-day average to 4,077 cases a day, just before the historic record of 4,133 daily cases set on December 23.
The holiday lull is easy to see in the state’s moving average, which fell to 3,142 on December 29.
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The highest number of cases this week includes a record 5,498 cases reported on January 5. At the current rate, Alabama is likely to surpass the 400,000 case mark of all time this weekend.
The state also reported 319 virus deaths this week, the second highest weekly total since screening began. Again, some of these probably would have been reported in the previous week, had it not been for the holidays.
Alabama passed the 5,000 death mark earlier this week, and the state reported 305 deaths in just the past three days.
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More than 10,000 of the cases reported this week occurred in four counties – the four most populous in Alabama – Jefferson, Madison, Mobile and Montgomery. But several others have seen substantial increases in their case counts this week, especially when controlling the population.
Crenshaw County, south of Montgomery, in southeastern Alabama, saw the biggest per capita increase in cases this week. ADPH reported 148 new cases this week, or 107.5 cases per 10,000 people. It was one of only two counties with more than 100 new cases per 10,000 people this week. The other was Hale, a small county south of Tuscaloosa, in the Black Belt region of Alabama.
Hale added 154 cases this week, or about 105.1 cases per 10.00 people.
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Jefferson County, the state’s most populous county and home to Birmingham, added the largest number of new cases in any county this week with 4,551. More than 57,600 cases have been reported in Jefferson County since the pandemic began.
ADPH also reported 57 new deaths in Jefferson County this week, the highest number in all counties. This raised Jefferson’s total death toll to 776.
Tuscaloosa and Walker counties also saw large increases in the number of deaths, but both were the result of large jumps in a single day. Tuscaloosa added 49 new deaths reported this week, but 45 of them occurred on Friday. Walker reported 32 new deaths this week, with 31 occurring on Thursday. Both large increases are probably the result of delays in each municipality.
You can see the weekly and total cases and deaths for each county in the table below:
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Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Send an email to Ramsey Archibald at [email protected]and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories on here.