
Gov. Tate Reeves, who for weeks resisted calls to issue a statewide order requiring residents to stay at home, is finalizing plans to issue such an order — a decision that comes amid mounting pressure from the state’s top medical leaders and lawmakers.
Sources familiar with Reeves’ plans told Mississippi Today that Reeves could announce the statewide stay-at-home order as early as Wednesday afternoon. The governor’s decision, sources said, was based in part on models showing Mississippi’s cases peaking near the end of April and early May.
For weeks, Reeves has maintained that the spread of cases in Mississippi did not yet warrant such action, also citing the potential effect of a shutdown on the state’s economy. As of Wednesday morning, governors in at least 33 states had issued some form of statewide shelter-in-place order.
But between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the walls closed in on Reeves as he faced increased pressure from state medical professionals and elected officials as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continued climbing.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, sent Reeves a grim plea for a “shelter in place” order in an email on Wednesday morning. She pointed out that if models of the virus’ spread in Mississippi are accurate, the need for intensive-care unit beds and ventilators “will surpass our resources.”
Sign up to receive texts from Mississippi Today as news around COVID-19 cases in Mississippi develops.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.