Alabama hospitals continue to see larger percentages of unvaccinated COVID patients among those hospitalized with the deadly virus.
Statewide on Saturday, 81 percent of the 1,125 hospitalized adults were unvaccinated, according to the Alabama Hospital Association, which notes on its website that the data is underreported and that five hospitals didn’t report data.
The Alabama Department of Public Health put COVID hospitalizations on Sunday at 1,155 but that is also likely an undercount due to fewer hospitals reporting numbers over the weekend.
Alabama has the fourth lowest percentage of fully vaccinated residents in the nation, at 42.9 percent, behind West Virginia, Idaho and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The hospital association’s website states the vaccination status of the 20 hospitalized children with COVID on Saturday was not available, but four of those children were in ICU’s and two on ventilators. There were eight hospitalized pregnant women with COVID on Saturday.
Alabama Hospital Association’s data for Saturday.
At UAB Hospital in Birmingham on Friday, 37 of the 46 COVID patients hospitalized were unvaccinated, 84 percent of those patients in the ICU were unvaccinated and 87.5 percent of patients on ventilators were unvaccinated.
At East Alabama Health’s hospitals on Thursday, 92 percent of the 38 hospitalized with COVID were unvaccinated, and all 14 of the patients in ICUs and all 14 on ventilators were unvaccinated. More than half of those 14 on ventilators were under the age of 60, with one person in their 20s.
Alabama for most of last week continued to see a seven-day average of newly reported COVID cases of more than 2,000. On Friday that seven-day average daily new reported cases fell to 1,787. That’s the first time it’s been under 2,000 since July 27, according to Alabama Department of Public Health data compiled by APR.
