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Dire Situation In Alabama Capital: ICUs Full, Coronavirus Cases Double In May

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This article is more than 3 years old.
Updated May 20, 2020, 04:10pm EDT

TOPLINE

The mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, says the city’s health care system has been “maxed out” as cases of coronavirus have more than doubled in May—a sharp contrast to the slowing coronavirus spread that’s taken place across much of the U.S.—while city businesses were allowed to reopen May 11, even as it appeared that Alabama hadn’t hit White House reopening guidelines.

KEY FACTS

Major hospitals in the Montgomery area have run out of ICU beds, Mayor Steven Reed said at a news conference Wednesday, while others only one or two beds left.

Patients in need of care are now instead being sent 90 miles away to Birmingham, Alabama, the mayor said, a step the city hasn’t had to take until now.

Over 470 people have tested positive in Montgomery over the past two weeks, the Alabama Political Reporter notes, while the city only had a cumulative total of 355 cases going into May.

With cases quickly rising, the city was placed on an unreleased White House hotspot watch list on May 7, according to NBC News, which obtained a copy of the report.

But despite the rapid spread, businesses in the city were allowed to reopen starting May 11, after Governor Kay Ivey officially moved Alabama into Phase 1 of its reopening.

As of now, Montgomery is not expected to run out of ventilators, a city health official said at Wednesday’s news conference.

CRITICAL QUOTE

“Right now, if you are from Montgomery and you need an ICU bed, you are in trouble,” Reed said, adding “we are at a very critical point in our health care system’s capacity to manage this crisis. They are at a capacity that is not sustainable.”

KEY BACKGROUND

While the coronavirus pandemic seems to have peaked across much of the U.S. sometime in early-to-mid-April, the spread has actually accelerated in many areas of Alabama.

The state appeared to hit a plateau in hospitalizations in April, with numbers dropping during the middle of the month compared with the start of April. But things started to swing in the other direction by the start of May, with the 706 reported hospitalizations on Monday the highest single day total since the coronavirus pandemic spread to Alabama. Though the confirmed number of coronavirus cases has spiked in several areas of the nation — perhaps most notably in Texas — that can largely be attributed to an increase in testing.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

It’s not clear exactly what’s driven the rapid spread in Montgomery recently.

“I don't have a specific indicator as to why that county did go up, but we do know that some of the cases were [epidemiologically] linked,” Dr. Karen Landers of the Alabama Department of Public Health told AL.com.

FURTHER READING

Montgomery hospitals are out of ICU beds, mayor says (Alabama Political Reporter)

Montgomery running out of ICU beds as coronavirus cases double in May (AL.com)

Montgomery hospitals at ‘very critical point’ with COVID-19, mayor says (WSFA)

New Cases Spike In Reopened States, Though Some Say That’s Due To Increased Testing (Forbes)

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