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Why are COVID cases rising in Alabama?

A health expert from Alabama's Department of Public Health shares why COVID cases are rising in the state.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — COVID cases are on a gradual rise again within the state, according to Dr. Wes Stubblefield, the District Medical Officer at Alabama Department of Public Health.

"Back in early April, we were at our lowest numbers after the omicron surge which was right around the first of the year…at that time we were only seeing about 100 cases per day on average and we've increased to now somewhere around 2000 cases per day."

Dr. Stubblefield says this rise in cases is happening for a few reasons: People's antibodies are decreasing from previous vaccination or infection there is a relaxation on mask-wearing inside and there are new variants.

"We've gone through about five different variants of Omicron. It is all still Omicron. We're just sort of slowly switching these over and those new variants have the ability to escape the immune system regardless of the type of immunity that you have."

Although, Dr. Stubblefield says it may be too soon to tell if there will be another major surge but right now the newer variants have been less severe. 

"It still remains to be seen whether this virus might mutate suddenly and cause, you know, a really big spike in cases. Right now we haven't seen that big spike, we've really just seen this sort of gradual increase over time."

If you are exposed to COVID or have contracted the virus, the CDC has a calculator that will tell you the right amount of time you should quarantine. 

And Dr. Stubblefield highly encourages those within the high-risk category to, "understand if they're at risk for severe disease, because we know the vaccine still prevents severe disease, and know how to get treatment and how to get testing if they are at high risk and are exposed and are infected."

RELATED: Back-to-School: Is your student up-to-date on vaccinations?

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