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Delta Health Center medical workers wait to vaccinate people at a Covid-19 pop-up vaccination clinic in this rural Delta community on April 27, 2021 in Hollandale, Mississippi.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in Mississippi are pushing up death rates statewide, according to the state health official.
“We’re going to see a lot of deaths in the next few days, it’s just inevitable,” Mississippi state health official Thomas Dobbs told reporters in a telephone briefing Wednesday.
Covid cases have skyrocketed in Mississippi over the past month, dropping nearly ten times from a seven-day average of 267 new cases a day a month ago to 2,640 on Tuesday, according to compiled data by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths, while still relatively small, have also gone from a seven-day average of around three deaths a day a month ago to more than 13, the data shows.
State hospitals are crowded with Covid patients, who occupy about 47% of the state’s available intensive care beds, according to data compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Most recent hospitalizations are in people under the age of 50, and the state is seeing more children hospitalized than it saw last winter, public health officials said. There are currently six children with Covid in intensive care across the state, four of whom are on life support, and the state has only one specialized children’s hospital.
“We will see more and more of it, especially as we see transmission in school settings,” Dobbs said.
About 97% of new cases in the state are unvaccinated people, and the vast majority of deaths from new cases will be unvaccinated people, he said. Daily hospitalizations in the state are at their highest since the start of the pandemic.
“We wouldn’t have this situation at all if we had a higher vaccination rate,” Dobbs said.
The state has the lowest per capita vaccination rate in the United States, but daily vaccination rates have tripled in the state over the past month amid the spread of the dominant delta variant, according to officials at state health.
The vaccination will take weeks to provide sufficient protection, Dobbs said. Patients are currently being turned away from local hospitals which are at full capacity and redirected to other hospitals in the state that may be miles from the patient’s home.
“Don’t be surprised if you get sick and end up in a hospital 200 miles away,” Dobbs said.
Mississippi health officials say they don’t see a drop in cases or hospitalizations in the coming weeks.
Vaccination is the best way to stop the spread of the delta variant, Dobbs said. Unvaccinated people should wear a mask in public, especially indoors, and avoid gatherings where transmission could occur.
“I understand people’s desire for individual freedoms, but we’re in the same boat, and what we do affects everyone,” Dobbs said.
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