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Sept. 18, 2021Updated Sept. 18, 2021, 5:04 p.m. ETSept. 18, 2021, 5:04 p.m. ET
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A nurse tending to a Covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Ala., last December.Credit...Julie Bennett/Associated Press
For the first time in Alabama’s known history, the state had more deaths than births in 2020 — a grim milestone that underscores the pandemic’s calamitous toll.
“Our state literally shrunk in 2020,” Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s state health officer, said at a news conference on Friday. There were 64,714 total deaths in the state last year, compared to 57,641 births, Dr. Harris said.
Such a gap had never been recorded, not even during World War I, World War II and the flu pandemic of 1918, Dr. Harris said. Going ba...