One funeral led to another as coronavirus spread in Mississippi, state official says
Mississippi’s top health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said Tuesday that there has been a recent case where someone suffering from COVID-19 attended a funeral, exposing people who were in attendance.
Dobbs said the person was showing clear symptoms of the virus at the time.
“Last week, we did have an event at a funeral where a contagious patient went to a funeral where they exposed many, many people,” Dobbs said. “Please, this is not over. Funerals in churches and mass gatherings were instances where we saw breakouts early on.
“We don’t want a funeral to lead to more funerals, which we have seen that.”
He added more details about the recent incident at Wednesday’s press conference, saying it happened in northeast Mississippi. About 50 people gathered in an indoor space that wasn’t a church, and one contagious person has so far led to 13 confirmed COVID-19 cases and another 8 possible cases.
Dobbs said the person was symptomatic at the funeral, triggering an investigation that will involve contact tracing to determine who may need to warned of the exposure.
“We’ll do a case investigation,” he said. “As part of that, we’ll look at where they’ve been and then do a contact tracing investigation of who might have been part of that event. We’ll give out quarantine orders if they have been exposed.”
He said that incident also “may not be the only funeral we’re investigating.”
While Gov. Tate Reeves recently set guidelines that will help places of worship restart in-person services, Dobbs said that it’s still safer to avoid those gatherings.
“Virtual worship services are recommended as the safest way to go,” Dobbs said. “For people that are practicing in-person worship, look at the governor’s recommendations to be safe as possible.”
The State Department of Health is hoping to recruit new investigators to help with contact tracing.
“We need more people doing that duty,” Dobbs said. “We have over 200 folks who are actively engaged. We’re adding more staff at this time.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 5:12 PM.
