Maddox: City At Highest 7-Day Average Yet For New COVID-19 Cases

TUSCALOOSA, AL. — A new spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations has been reported across the country ahead of Thanksgiving, with the city of Tuscaloosa proving no exception.

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said on Tuesday, the city had seen its highest seven-day average for new cases, which was at 73.43 new cases per day as of the publication of this story.

"That should tell us something, that it is different," Maddox pointed out. "The average is certainly higher than anything we’ve seen thus far on this journey."

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During his pre-meeting briefing to the City Council, Maddox also said DCH had reported 77 new inpatients from Nov. 18-23, marking the highest total of new coronavirus inpatients admitted over the course of a week since the pandemic began. His update came after DCH on Monday reported a total of 81 hospitalizations, while the county confirmed 133 new cases Tuesday.

"The other thing that needs to become the warning sign, we look at 60 [inpatient cases] to keep an eye on what’s going on," he said of the threshold often cited with respect to hospitalizations. "The last few days we’ve seen ever-increasing numbers of hospitalizations."

Maddox also mentioned that while UAB has alluded to the possibility of exploring the suspension of elective surgeries, DCH has not yet reached that point and the situation on the ground for the hospital system continues to be "manageable."

"That, again, is a very positive sign," he said.

But with Thanksgiving on Thursday and the Iron Bowl in Tuscaloosa Saturday, the mayor lamented the possibility of further community spreading of the virus.

ALSO READ: DCH Hits Highest Coronavirus Inpatient Total Since August Spike

"We have Thanksgiving, we have the Iron Bowl, albeit a much smaller scale, and students will not be returning," Maddox pointed out. "So what does that mean for the next 3-4 weeks? I don’t think anyone can tell you. They certainly are critical because we do know our hospital numbers will climb. It’s something we certainly need to monitor."

As far the city's workforce position is concerned, Maddox did mention issues beginning to arise with exposure, primarily for Tuscaloosa Fire Rescue and the Tuscaloosa Police Department. In total, 74 city employees are on leave due to COVID-19 positivity or exposure, with the majority coming in TFR (40) and TPD (20).

"It does require us to reach out to our partners in the state to help with game day operations this coming Saturday," he said. "We will be doing that so we don’t lose any of our force activation across the city. As the number of exposures increase, our first responders, especially, are going to be interacting with those exposures which then create the cascading issues you see."

In helping to make sense of the numbers and add context, Maddox also stressed to the public that the most important numbers to watch moving forward will be the county's seven-day average and the number of hospitalizations.

He also said DCH and the city's incident command still have options in its medical surge plan, in the event the hospital system begins to run into capacity issues.

"Those will continue to have to be the two tools we use in this process," Maddox said. "If we get into triple digits, we’re in a whole new area."

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