‘Absolutely maddening.’ Unmasked MS residents are spreading COVID-19, health officer says
The number of COVID-19 cases in Harrison County has increased 48.3% over the last two weeks, but only 15 Mississippi State Health Department workers are tracking down the source of new cases in all of South Mississippi’s six counties, the health department says.
Regional Health Officer Dr. Christy Barnett said COVID-19 is spreading among families, but she was unable to say how infections started in those households. She checked with the South Mississippi contact tracing team at the Sun Herald’s request.
“As for demographics on who is bringing COVID into family settings, they have no info on that,” Barnett said. “Typically, many of the family members get tested at the same time, so no way of knowing who had it first. They have not identified any specific sites where outbreaks have occurred.”
An outbreak around Oxford, traced to off-campus fraternity rush parties this summer, was actually discovered by the mayor, Robyn Tannehill, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs conceded when questioned at a news conference Thursday.
Dobbs said early in the coronavirus outbreak, back in March, that contact tracing would be a cornerstone of the Health Department’s strategy to curb COVID. But the Health Department simply doesn’t have enough contact tracers to perform the time-consuming job in cases across the state, said Dr. Robert Travnicek, a public health doctor and former regional health officer for South Mississippi.
The point of contact tracing is to identify and isolate COVID-19 victims and contacts so the disease doesn’t spread further. Most of the state’s 200 contact tracers were pulled from other departments or agencies or are new hires.
“This is a very complex sort of thing,” said Travnicek, who is retired. “Normally, you have to have these people trained for years. They go to CDC and learn their contact tracing because it’s an art form to get people to talk.”
He and other public health experts fear COVID-19 spread will only worsen in Mississippi because too many people — including Governor Tate Reeves and many state legislators — have failed to follow public health and state guidelines: wear masks in public, socially distance and avoid crowds.
“I kid you not, if we could just do those things, a lot of the predictions are that coronavirus would just wither away,” Dobbs said. “But we just don’t have the patience, unfortunately, to do the easiest things. It’s absolutely maddening.”
Young people less likely to wear masks
A single COVID-19 case can take a day to track, Susan Hassig, director of the public health program in epidemiology at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, has told the Sun Herald.
Harrison County alone reported 16 new cases Wednesday, with a total of 489 new cases statewide between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Like many states, Mississippi reopened for business before public health guidelines recommended, based on testing and COVID-19 transmission levels.
Reeves and Dobbs have counted on Mississippians to help lower coronavirus spread. But the results are mixed. Dobbs said compliance with mask wearing and other guidelines has been best among African-Americans, who are dying at the highest rate.
Young people, he said, are a harder sell. The MSHD plans to reach out to them through social media about wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding crowds, especially indoors. He fears what will happen in the fall, when cases are expected to climb again.
Dobbs is not so much worried about formal school settings where conditions can be controlled but about what happens outside classrooms.
“It’s the other things that are going to kill us,” he said. “It’s the extra-curricular activities, it’s the sporting events, it’s the fraternity parties and social events. That’s going to be our challenge. . . . As we’ve seen, this is the summer and we can’t even stop fraternity parties in the summer, so I’m gravely concerned.”
The majority of new cases at Gulfport Memorial Hospital is in adults in their 20s and 30s, infectious disease Dr. Nicholas Conger said.
“Harrison County really hadn’t even experienced what I would consider a first wave . . . our numbers stayed low,” Conger said.
“Now that we’re opening up and people are out and about, we’re more likely to have a population that hasn’t had it before. Our population is susceptible. The virus isn’t going away. I’m not surprised because people aren’t staying quarantined in their homes.”
COVID-19 fatigue is real
Barnett believes residents have developed COVID-19 fatigue. It’s summertime, she said, and they want to cook out, go to the beach and take vacations.
“Initially, everyone was kind of on guard and now we’ve all relaxed,” she said. “We’re not wearing our masks as much, especially around family. People are going back to work and more things are opening up.. That’s why we’re seeing increased numbers.”
Harrison and Jackson counties are currently on the MSHD list of 12 counties with high case counts. But the number of cases per county is still far lower in Harrison and Jackson than it is in the other counties on the list.
▪ Harrison County has 177.6 total cases per 100,000 people.
▪ Jackson County has 256.1 cases per 100,000 people.
▪ Lee County in north Mississippi, where Tupelo is located, has the next lowest case numbers on the list, with 353.2 cases per 100,000 people.
▪ Wayne County in east central Mississippi has the highest count, with 1,916.4 cases per 100,000 people.
Governor’s executive orders fall short
Dr. Alton Cobb, a revered public health figure in Mississippi who was state health officer for 20 years, said he wishes the governor had gone further with his executive orders for reopening by requiring Mississippians to wear masks.
“Other countries did, and I think it would have been better,” Cobb said. “We live in a democracy and we cherish that, but sometimes there are emergencies where people need to be directed to do something.
“ I think our political leaders could have been stronger, could have been a lot stronger, but they’ve got to be elected.
“There are people who need to get out and go to work and there are some people who feel so powerful themselves, they don’t think they’ll get anything.”
In the daily news conference, both Reeves and Dobbs regularly implore people to wear masks. But Reeves has failed to follow his own advice more than once.
He was photographed at the state Capitol without a mask in late May. And he wasn’t social distancing, either. He was standing next to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who stood in a mask with his head bent.
He told Mississippi Today: “What I would tell you is that when I have gone out in public, which has been rare in the last three months, I have tried to wear a mask.
“I probably should have had on a mask. It is not mandated. It is not as if it is a mandate, but it certainly is more responsible.”
Reeves attended the funeral of a Simpson County deputy on Wednesday, also without a mask. Hundreds of people were there and funerals are common spreaders of coronavirus.
He told the media a day later:
“The emotions were very, very high. I did have a mask. It was in my pocket. I should have put it on.”
Preventing coronavirus spread ‘so easy’
With a shortage of contact tracers, reopening of the economy and the failure of many Mississippians to follow recommended health guidelines, public health experts fear the COVID-19 count will continue to spike.
“The cases have been going up the last couple of weeks,” Cobb said. “The only way we’re going to control this virus is if we had a medication that was very effective, but we don’t have it yet. A vaccine is really the only answer to this and it’s several months away.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the next several months. We may lose a lot of people.”
Meanwhile, Dobbs said, everything in the COVID fight is related. Young people who fail to follow guidelines bring home the illness to parents and grandparents, with the elderly more likely to die.
“It’s just the way this thing works,” Dobbs said. “So please, everyone, follow the rules and be careful. The things that we can do to prevent transmission are so very easy.
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 2:11 PM.
