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By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Managing Editor

While the last two weeks of COVID-19 have been the worst in Shelby County’s battle against COVID-19, as well as the state’s, it begs the question: What does that mean for hospitalization and death numbers?

Are they increasing? Are the staying the same? Or are they decreasing?

While most would expect the answer to be an increase, the correct answer would be about the same to a slight decrease in each.

The largest increase in new hospitalizations for a day came back on May 13 with 110 hospitalizations across the state during that day alone.

Since then, there have been 25 days with 100 or more hospitalizations and 21 days with less than 100 hospitalizations with 106 on May 21 being the highest.

During the last three weeks, the number of new hospitalizations have been as low as 84 and as high as 105, but the average remains below 100 at 94 per day.

That’s a shift from an average of 98 per day the three weeks before that and 99.1 per day the three weeks before that. That’s a decrease in hospitalizations despite more people testing positive.

During that first three-week span, there were 5,503 cases, during the second three-week span there were 8,124 new cases and during the most recent three-week span there were 16,516 new cases.

That shows a trend in which there are more people testing positive for the virus, but less going to the hospital.

As far as deaths go, there have now been 905 confirmed deaths by the Alabama Department of Public Health across the state.

But between April 21 and May 12, there were five days with more than 25 deaths in a day. Since then, there has been only one day with more than 25 deaths in a day—26 on June 8.

Over the last nine weeks, we’ve seen increases of 260 deaths during one three-week span, 200 during the next three-week span and 217 during the most recent three-week span.

So despite seeing an increase in positive tests across the state, hospitalizations and deaths aren’t seeing any difference in increases and are seeing decreases in some cases.

With the 905 deaths thus far, that means 97.6 percent of those who have tested positive end up surviving the virus while 2.4 percent have died.