Mississippians aged 65 and over and those with certain pre-existing conditions are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, top health officials announced Tuesday.
Those pre-existing conditions, outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are: cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, Down syndrome, heart conditions, immunocompromised conditions, obesity, pregnancy, sickle cell disease, smoking and diabetes. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs advised that those with other serious medical conditions should still consult their physician to check eligibility.
As of Tuesday, the state has administered 62,744 shots of the vaccine over the last four weeks; that total includes about 5,000 Mississippians who have received their first and second doses.
While the pace of vaccinations has skyrocketed — last week the state health department reported about 23,000 doses administered — only four states have lower rates of administered vaccines per capita than Mississippi, according to the CDC.
Dobbs also expressed concern over the racial disparity in people who’ve received doses; so far 16% of vaccinations have gone to Black Mississippians — 64% of recipients are white, and 19% are listed as “Other.”
“We need to do a better job about making sure we address the concerns about the African American community about getting the vaccine and also about making sure there’s access,” Dobbs said at Tuesday’s press conference.
Gov. Tate Reeves, who joined Dobbs at a Tuesday press conference to announce the expansion of vaccine eligibility, expressed concern over the slow rollout of shots in long-term care facilities as well as at hospitals.
Regarding LTCs, Reeves said the federal program’s partners CVS and Walgreens have attributed the issue to a “lack of personnel,” and said that many states are experiencing similar problems with the federal pharmacy partnership.
“We’re clearly disappointed in the progress in the long-term care project,” Dobbs said. He explained the rollout is taking much longer than anticipated, as some facilities aren’t scheduled to receive visits until February. Dobbs added that if CVS and Walgreens can’t reach LTCs “quickly enough,” individual facilities could be removed from the program and the state could directly provide vaccines instead.
Hospitals have received 104,000 doses, Reeves said, but have administered less than half of those so far.
“They’ve been given an allocation, and in some cases not using them, and that has to stop,” Reeves said, adding that further allocations from the federal government will depend on administration rates, and that slow rollouts at hospitals could cost the state doses. “It’s why we’ve largely supplanted them with state-run drive-thru clinics.”
Reeves added that he expects his next announcement around vaccines will be to expand eligibility to emergency first responders, firefighters, police officers and teachers.
On Tuesday, MSDH reported 98 additional COVID-19 related deaths, the most so far in a single day. Mississippi’s seven-day average for new cases reached a new high on Sunday of 2,431.
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.