Alabama, Georgia, and Texas accounted for a third of the nation's COVID-19 deaths last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University released on Tuesday.
Nearly 10,000 people died from complications related to the coronavirus. One of three of each fatalities occurred in Alabama, Texas or Georgia. This follows news that Alabama’s death rate from COVID-19 exceeded the state’s birth rate in 2020.
Alabama’s population is taking a hit following the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The state saw over 64,000 deaths compared to under 58,000 births. Alabama’s leading health official Scott Harris provided the numbers of births and deaths in a press briefing last Friday. Harris said the state population is down and by quite a large margin.
“This past year 2020 is going to be the first year that we know of in the history of our state where we actually had more deaths than births,” he said. “Our state literally shrunk in 2020 based on the numbers that we have managed to put together.”
Alabama’s population has been recorded since the 1910s. Harris said despite international war, poverty and other deadly pandemics, the state has never seen more deaths than births recorded.
“In World War 2 or during the Flu pandemic of 1918 or World War 1, we’ve never had a time where deaths exceeded births until this past year, and it’s certainly possible that could happen again this year as well if we continue on the same rate,” Harris said.
This comes as under 52% of Alabamians have received one or more coronavirus vaccines compared to only 41% of residents who are fully vaccinated. Alabama is continuing to see a 7-day average of 3,100 coronavirus cases and 76 deaths per week, according to information from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
