Calhoun County COVID Numbers Are Going the Wrong Way

The Calhoun County Health Department continues to give vaccinations and Health Officer Eric Pessell said Monday they expect to give between 2,500-3,000 shots again this week. But Pessell cautions that the COVID-19 stats in the county have not been encouraging in the past couple of weeks.

“We are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases,” said Pessell. “I know last week we were being cautiously optimistic, but by the end of the week, it was pretty clear that we're seeing things going in the wrong direction. And we're seeing our hospitalization numbers go up as well.” As of Friday, March 12^th, there were 8,714 confirmed cases, 397 hospitalizations, 220 deaths and currently 18 persons in the hospital.

Pessell cautions us against getting over-confident as they continue to vaccinate people. “People still need to practice social distancing, wear a mask when you go out in public and we've got to do that for a while yet until we get enough people vaccinated that we can get back to somewhat normal.”

The county has an on-line registration up and running and officials hope it will be used by anyone wanting a vaccine who has internet access.

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Pessell said people can register to get vaccinated, but cautions that we’ll still need to be patient. “Right now we're going to work to vaccinate people aged 50 and older with underlying health conditions. On March 22^nd, if you're 16 and older with underlying conditions, you're also eligible. So I would encourage everybody to get registered no matter what your age.”

Pessell says in the last week the County has administered many second dose vaccinations for various groups. “Many folks from both Kellogg's and Post were able to be vaccinated.”

Pessell says the county is getting the same amount of vaccine this week as the week before but he expects that they’ll start to see a substantial increase by the end of this month. The health department is administering the Pfizer vaccine, and transferring the Moderna vaccine to local pharmacies, Oaklawn hospital, and Grace Health. He said that if we want to get a vaccine at one of those places, we need to call them directly for now. But he said the plan is to consolidate the efforts through the Calhoun County Health Department soon.

READ ON: See the States Where People Live the Longest

Stacker used data from the 2020 County Health Rankings to rank every state's average life expectancy from lowest to highest. The 2020 County Health Rankings values were calculated using mortality counts from the 2016-2018 National Center for Health Statistics. The U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey and America's Health Rankings Senior Report 2019 data were also used to provide demographics on the senior population of each state and the state's rank on senior health care, respectively.

Read on to learn the average life expectancy in each state.