Gov. Kay Ivey is relaxing restrictions on aspects of normal life such as zoos and water parks even as Alabama faces a rise in COVID-19 cases — and in some areas, a shortage of hospital beds for coronavirus patients.
" of coronavirus precautions. The state must find a balance, she said, between acknowledging the deadly threat of COVID-19 and helping people pursue their livelihoods.sounded an alarm by saying hospital patients in central Alabama who need to be in intensive care might not be able to find an ICU bed.
"Our health care system has been maxed out," Reed said, adding that patients in his community were being sent to Birmingham. He urged residents not to take"needless risks" and to keep the virus from spreading further. The amended order will be in effect from 5 p.m. local time Friday through July 3. It increases the number of businesses Alabama allowed to resume operations on May 1, when retail stores received the OK to open at 50% of their occupancy capacity. Restaurants, bars and breweries were also allowed to reopen then, with limited seating and at least 6 feet between tables. Hundreds of thousands of Alabamians have suffered job losses from the pandemic's effects: Alabama's unemployment rate hit 12.9% in April, the stateThe jobless rate is even worse in some of its most populous counties, such as Mobile and Montgomery, both at 15.1%, and Tuscaloosa at 16.8%. At least three other counties reported unemployment rates of 20% or more. "This pandemic has negatively impacted Alabama's economy and in two months' time has managed to undo years of positive progress," Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington said as he released the figures Friday."But the impact to our employers and workers who carry the economy is even greater. So many had life-altering changes that impacted their families almost overnight. Alabama's leisure and hospitality businesses have been hammered by shutdowns and physical distancing rules due to the coronavirus, losing roughly 80,000 jobs in April.
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