Vaccine Provider Toolkit
Click the icon above to see our COVID-19 vaccine provider toolkit. It includes information on vaccine allocation, storage, billing/coding, enrollment instructions, FAQs, and more.
REGEN-COV Provider Toolkit
Click the icon above to see our REGEN-COV vaccine provider toolkit. It includes information on dosage, administration, ordering, and more.
COVID-19 Testing Sites
Due to the expansive number of COVID-19 testing centers Alabama now has, we have decided to create a standalone webpage for this information. Please click the icon at the top of this alert to visit.
Monoclonal Antibody Treatment Sites
Click on the icon above to see a list of Monoclonal Antibody Treatment Sites. This data is subject to change and based on shipments reported by the distributor. This list is not a guarantee of availability.
Coronavirus News and Information
99% of Alabama's COVID Deaths from January to June were Unvaccinated
Almost all of Alabama’s COVID deaths from January through June were among unvaccinated people, according to State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris.
Of the 2,379 COVID-19 deaths reported in the state from Jan. 19 to June 30, 25 were reported among people identified as fully vaccinated, meaning it had been at least 2 weeks since their final vaccine dose. The remaining 2,354 – or 99% of the deaths – were people who had not been vaccinated.
“Severe illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 are overwhelmingly in the unvaccinated. Follow the data and science and get vaccinated as soon as possible,” Harris said.
Alabama has reported a total of 11,542 COVID deaths since March 2020. The state has vaccinated roughly 34% of the population, the lowest figure in the nation.
AL.com has more on this story.
How the Coronavirus Infects Cells - and Why Delta is so Dangerous
The coronavirus sports a luxurious sugar coat. “It’s striking,” thought Rommie Amaro, staring at her computer simulation of one of the trademark spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, which stick out from the virus’s surface. It was swathed in sugar molecules, known as glycans.
“When you see it with all the glycans, it’s almost unrecognizable,” says Amaro, a computational biophysical chemist at the University of California, San Diego.
Many viruses have glycans covering their outer proteins, camouflaging them from the human immune system like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But last year, Amaro’s laboratory group and collaborators created the most detailed visualization yet of this coat, based on structural and genetic data and rendered atom-by-atom by a supercomputer. On 22 March 2020, she posted the simulation to Twitter. Within an hour, one researcher asked in a comment: what was the naked, uncoated loop sticking out of the top of the protein?
Read more from Nature…
Viral Posts Misrepresent CDC Announcement on COVID-19 PCR Test
Scientists consider polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests a highly reliable tool for diagnosing COVID-19. But social media posts are misrepresenting a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement regarding the eventual discontinuation of its own test, falsely claiming the government has conceded that PCR tests aren’t reliable.
The agency in a July 21 notice recommended that labs use “one of the many FDA-authorized alternatives” and said it “encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.” Such multiplex tests, including one from the CDC, can look for both the novel coronavirus and multiple types of influenza at the same time — which conserves testing materials and allows public health labs to do influenza surveillance while testing for SARS-CoV-2, or the virus that causes COVID-19.
But the CDC did not say it was no longer supporting the use of PCR tests in general, many of which have been authorized by the FDA — or that its original PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 can’t tell the difference between coronavirus and influenza — as viral posts spreading online falsely claim.
Read more…
Quick Resources
ALBME Updates:
AL Pharmacy Updates:
COVID Maps & Data:
Resources tailored to your setting
Specialty Physicians
- ACS: Local Resumption of Elective Surgery Guidance
- Coronavirus Toolkit for Managing Your Independent Primary Care Practice
- ACOG Practice Advisory: Novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19)
- ACEP PPE Updates – What You Need to Know
- Information for Pediatric Providers
- Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) Requirements and Implications Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019
Clinical Care
- Interim Clinical Guidance for Management of Patients with Confirmed Coronavirus Infection
- Guidance for Infection Control Prevention: FAQs for Patient Triage, Placement and Hospital Discharge
- Strategies to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 in Long-Term Care Facilities
- What Health Care Personnel Should Know about Caring for Patients with Confirmed or Possible Infection
- Preparedness Checklist for Transport and Arrival of Patients With Confirmed or Possible COVID-19
Practice Materials
- AMA Physician Practice Guide to Reopening
- Steps Health Care Facilities Can Take Now to Prepare for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
- Get Your Clinic Ready for Coronavirus (COVID-19)
- CDC: Strategies for Optimizing the Supply of PPE
- AMA CPT COVID-19 Codes and Descriptions for Testing
- How to avoid COVID-19 infection at work: tips from an infectious disease physician
COVID-19 News
Stay Up to Date on All Things Coronavirus
- The Small-Business Die-Off Is Here
- This is where all 50 states stand on reopening
- Only 1 Percent of the Population has Been Tested
- Coronavirus Death in California Came Weeks Before First Known U.S. Death
- Testing Falls Woefully Short as Trump Seeks an End to Stay-at-Home Orders
- CMS to allow providers to practice at top of license, across states
- NYT: Coronavirus Was Slow to Spread to Rural America. Not Anymore.
- New York Times: Coronavirus Live Updates
- ‘I Do Fear for My Staff,’ a Doctor Said. He Lost His Job.
- Thousands of US medical workers furloughed, laid off as routine patient visits drop during coronavirus pandemic
- More than 3 million file U.S. unemployment claims, the most ever in a week
- Clinicians Struggle With PPE Shortages
- Martha Roby: COVID-19 Update
- Top Pentagon officials estimate coronavirus crisis could last months
- Physicians may no longer need a new license to cross state lines
- DEA Okays Telehealth to Prescribe Opioids Amid COVID-19 Emergency
- American Hospital Capacity And Projected Need for COVID-19 Patient Care
- FAQs on Shortages of Surgical Masks and Gowns
- “This is not the bat’s fault”: A disease expert explains where the coronavirus likely comes from
- Why do viruses often come from bats? A discussion with your friendly neighborhood virologist
- Substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus
- Profile of a Killer Virus
- Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- COVID-19: The CIDRAP Viewpoint
- COVID-19 No Worse Than the Flu? Hardly
- What Antibody Studies Can Tell You — and More Importantly, What They Can’t
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection in Children and Adolescents
- First confirmed detection of SARS-CoV-2 in untreated wastewater in Australia: A proof of concept for the wastewater surveillance of COVID-19 in the community
- Ending coronavirus lockdowns will be a dangerous process of trial and error
- Coronavirus hot spots erupt in nation’s high-risk communities
- Novel Coronavirus and Old Lessons — Preparing the Health System for the Pandemic
- Critical Supply Shortages — The Need for Ventilators and Personal Protective Equipment during the Covid-19 Pandemic
- The Toughest Triage — Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic
- FDA: Investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma – Emergency INDs
- Here’s How Many People Have the Coronavirus in Your State
- Study suggests new coronavirus may remain on surfaces for days
- No Evidence Found for SARS-CoV-2 Vertical Transmission to Fetus
- Covid-19: ibuprofen should not be used for managing symptoms, say doctors and scientists
- FDA to Study Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
- COVID-19 in a Long-Term Care Facility
- Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease (03/19/20)
- Estimating clinical severity of COVID-19 from transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China (03/19/20)
- Covid-19 — The Search for Effective Therapy (03/18/20)
- A Trial of Lopinavir–Ritonavir in Adults Hospitalized with Severe Covid-19 (03/18/20)
- From Containment to Mitigation of COVID-19 in the US (03/13/20)
- Supporting the Health Care Workforce During the COVID-19 Global Epidemic (03/12/20)
- Priorities for the US Health Community Responding to COVID-19 (03/03/20)
- US Emergency Legal Responses to Novel Coronavirus (02/13/20)
- Coronavirus Infections—More Than Just the Common Cold (01/23/20)
- The Business of Medicine in the Era of COVID-19
- The Race for Coronavirus Vaccines
- COVID-19 and the Financial Health of US Hospitals
- What policy makers need to know about COVID-19 protective immunity
- Born Into A Pandemic: Virus Complicates Births For Moms And Babies
- About Half of Lower-Income Americans Report Household Job or Wage Loss Due to COVID-19
- Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It?
- A National and State Plan To End the Coronavirus Crisis
- It’s the End of the World Economy as We Know It
- 1819: AL Senate Candidates Discuss the Coronavirus and the $2 Trillion Stimulus Bill
- Senate Approves $2 Trillion Stimulus After Bipartisan Deal
- FDA will allow doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with blood from survivors
- CMS approves Medicaid waivers for 11 states in response to COVID-19 crisis
- Revised Families First Coronavirus Response Act Becomes Law — Five Things Healthcare Providers Need to Know
- White House, Congress agree on $2 trillion virus rescue bill
- Executive Order on Prioritizing and Allocating Health and Medical Resources
- Sewell updates public on efforts to fight virus
- Lawmakers may add surprise billing plan to virus response bill
- Private Health Coverage of COVID-19: Key Facts and Issues
- State Data and Policy Actions to Address Coronavirus (Kaiser Family Foundation)
- Senate passes House coronavirus relief package with no changes
- White House proposes $1 trillion coronavirus stimulus package
- A Brief History of Quarantine
- Listen: Don’t Worry About a ‘New Strain’
- The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations
- What Health Care Leaders and Clinicians Say About the Covid-19 Pandemic
- Health Insurers to Investors: We’re Good. Health Insurers to Lawmakers: Please Help.
- Many Health Providers on Brink of Insolvency
- Medical Staffing Companies Cut Doctors’ Pay While Spending Millions on Political Ads
- Coronavirus Fuels Explosive Growth In Telehealth ― And Concern About Fraud
- How the Small-Business Health Insurance Market Is Faring
- Primary Care and the COVID-19 Pandemic
- To ‘Keep The Lights On,’ Doctors And Hospitals Ask For Advance Medicare Payments
- 15 heroic firsthand stories from the coronavirus front lines
- Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It?
- Dispatch From A Country Doctor: Seeing Patients Differently In The Time Of Coronavirus
- Doctors worried about survival of their medical practices: ‘This could be the death blow,’ says physician
- Doctors will die. My friends will die.
- We are not expendable. We are not replaceable.
- America’s Hospitals Have Never Experienced Anything Like This
- Strong, Determined: Portraits of COVID-19 Healthcare Workers
- A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients
- I Thought COVID-19 Was Overblown. I Was Wrong.
- 4 Ways you havent thought about using telehealth during covid-19 pandemic
- I’m a mom, a daughter and a doctor – here’s how my family is preparing for the days ahead
- How The Novel Coronavirus And The Flu Are Alike … And Different
- It’s scary as hell to be a doctor right now
- The Healthiest Way to Sweat Out a Pandemic
- How Parents Can Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine
- How You Should Get Food During the Pandemic
- The Dos and Don’ts of ‘Social Distancing’
- In public health emergency, agencies make plans for vulnerable populations
- Covid-19 — The Law and Limits of Quarantine
- Coronavirus Puts a Spotlight on Paid Leave Policies
- 7 things to do instead of hoarding toilet paper