Two days after announcing his daughter tested positive for COVID-19 and postponing a press conference, Gov. Tate Reeves went live on Facebook Thursday to share his thoughts on the rising COVID-19 case numbers in Mississippi.
As of Thursday, the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases in Mississippi reached 968, a 23% increase in the last two weeks. On Wednesday, the average surpassed 1,000 for the first time since Aug. 5.
In a virtual town hall on Thursday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs warned that the state’s hospital system is under “extreme stress.”
Intensive Care Units are 88% full statewide, and seven of the highest level COVID-care centers have zero beds: Baptist Memorial Hospital in Southaven, Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Baptist Medical Center, St. Dominic, and Merit Health Central in Jackson, and Merit Health Wesley in Hattiesburg.
In the last two weeks, total hospitalizations are up 6%, patients in the ICU are up 15%, and patients on ventilators are up 23%.
“Our fall surge is going in very much the wrong direction over the last week or so,” Dobbs said on Thursday. “We’re seeing near record high case numbers, and the consistency is pretty astounding.”
Meanwhile, Reeves, who is currently quarantining because of possible exposure by his daughter, focused time during his Thursday social media appearance on presidential politics.
After an adviser to President-Elect Joe Biden mentioned the idea of a six-week lockdown, Reeves called the proposal “totally and completely beyond reasonableness.”
“What I would tell you is, even based upon some of the things I’ve heard from his campaign, I don’t think much of anything’s going to change with respect to the virus,” Reeves said. “The fact is, we’re going to try to work with whomever the president is, but we’re not going to participate in a nationwide lockdown.
“While I don’t believe that there’s any constitutional or statutory authority for any president to shut down Mississippi’s economy, we will certainly fight that if it becomes necessary.”
The governor also addressed questions around the criteria for county mask mandates. Currently, the following 15 counties are under mask mandates: Benton, Carroll, Covington, DeSoto, Forrest, Harrison, Humphreys, Jackson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Leflore, Lee, Marshall, Rankin and Yalobusha.
Reeves said the criteria for issuing county mask mandates has not changed since his office began issuing them.
Previously, he had said counties would be under a mask mandate if they either: had over 200 total cases in the last two weeks, or if they had over 500 cases per 100,000 people in the last two weeks.
“There is no fudging of the data, there is no fudging of the numbers,” he said. “It is what it is.”
However, the counties in the chart below meet the second criteria but aren’t under a mask mandate:
Erica Hensley contributed to this report.
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.