Mississippi will be nation’s #1 in new COVID cases, Harvard Global Health director says
The director of the Harvard Global Health Institute says Mississippi is on track to be the no. 1 state in the country for new coronavirus cases per capita.
Dr. Ashish Jha posted a Twitter thread on Saturday, saying Mississippi is “doing VERY badly but has received little attention.”
Last week, the state was second only to Florida in number of new COVID-19 cases compared to its population, and Mississippi’s number is “going up” while Florida’s is “slowly inching down.”
“But the story here is much worse,” Jha said.
The state is already no. 1 in its test positivity rate, which is the number of tests that come back from labs as confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, at 22%. Testing also is down 8% in the state over the past two weeks, he tweeted, while cases are up 37%. Hospitalizations are up, he said, and the daily death toll has doubled.
Jha also mentioned how much of the state and its businesses are open with “only modest limits” and no statewide mask mandate.
Those restrictions are needed for children to be able to return to schools safely, he said.
“Can’t open schools now. They’ll just shut down.”
If Mississippi wants kids in school buildings, the doctor said three things need to happen:
- “Stop indoor dining/bars/gyms
- Statewide masking
- Fix testing.”
Jha is a professor of global health at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was recently appointed dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He has been a much-interviewed health expert during the pandemic, and was one of the first to call for a national quarantine. Last week, he made headlines for saying the pandemic is not yet halfway over and that we’re only at “the top of the fourth inning.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
