Florida health system is preparing to distribute Pfizer vaccine
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said today that “it’s clear” the state is in the middle of its second surge of Covid-19.
He said that the state is currently seeing a seven-day average of 1,300 cases per day. Hospitalizations are also trending upward, although not at the levels of peak in August, he said.
Dr. Thomas Dobbs of the state’s health department said today that there are zero intensive care unit beds available in DeSoto County, which is in the northernmost part of the state, and just one hospital in Jackson that still has ICU beds available.
Even if cases decline, hospitalizations will continue to rise, Reeves said. He said the state needs to continue to act.
Reeves announced that more counties throughout the state qualified for additional measures, including a mask mandate. He is adding 19 more counties to the state’s mask mandate. This means that half of the state’s counties under the additional restrictions.
While four of the original counties do not currently meet the criteria to stay under the restrictions, Reeves said that the data shows that there is a small margin, and he has made the decision to keep the restrictions in place for another week.
“With certainty, social gatherings in and around Halloween has helped contribute to where we find ourselves today,” Reeves said. He said that is really when this second wave began.
What the numbers look like: The state is reporting 665 new cases today, but Dobbs said that the reporting from some of the electronic labs has not fully updated yet and the numbers will increase. The total number of cases in Mississippi is now at 144,544.
Mississippi now has a total of 3,729 deaths, with 54 new deaths reported today. Dobbs said, for perspective, there are 18% more deaths throughout the state this year than a normal year.
Note: These numbers were released by the state’s public health agency and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
