‘We will see deaths’ from holiday gatherings during COVID-19, MS official warns
Mississippi could have a deadly holiday season if residents fail to heed public health advice for avoiding COVID-19, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs warned during a Tuesday news conference.
He knows extended families will gather for the holidays, eating and drinking without masks, the generations mingling. Younger people at those gatherings might well have COVID-19 that they will pass along to older relatives who will die, he said. Dobbs said the COVID-19 death rate in people over 65 is around 13%,
“It’s a perfect storm for an explosive outbreak of coronavirus,” Dobbs said. “ . . . We will see deaths, absolutely, around holiday gatherings.”
Those deaths are preventable, he said, if everyone in Mississippi takes the precautions health officials have been preaching for months: wear a mask, practice social distancing, and avoid indoor gatherings with people from other households.
COVID-19 cases in Mississippi are widespread in at least 60 of 82 counties, with numbers that are similar to the summer peak before Gov. Tate Reeves initiated a statewide mask mandate Aug. 5, which he rescinded Sept. 30.
Only 22 of counties with the heaviest caseloads, including Harrison and Jackson in South Mississippi, are currently under mask mandates.
COVID-19 cases filling hospitals, schools
Mississippi now has a total of 135,803 COVID-19 cases and 3,581 deaths. The seven-day average for new cases is now 1,094.71 a day.
What the high caseloads mean, say Dobbs and state Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers:
▪ Hospitals are filling up and could be unable to treat patients who have had car wrecks, heart attacks, strokes, pnuemonia or other medical emergencies.
▪ School quarantines have jumped from 9,000 students one week to 14,000 this past week, with 70 new outbreaks reported in school settings over the past week.
COVID-19 vaccine could soon reach Mississippi
Some positive developments on the medical front could help. A new antiviral medication is being distributed to Mississippi healthcare providers.
The monoclonal antibody therapy, bamlanivimab, has received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. It is designed for use in patients with mild to moderate symptoms so hospitalization can be avoided.
Dobbs also said a COVID-19 vaccine could be available in Mississippi by December under a compressed approval process that would still involve thorough vetting by federal agencies.
“We have a vaccine around the corner,” Dobbs said. “We have a light at the end of the tunnel. Now is not the time to throw caution to the wind.”
Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna have developed vaccinations shown in initial trials to be 90% and 94.5% effective, respectively, against COVID-19.
The MSDH has developed an extensive COVID-19 vaccination plan that will change as circumstances warrant.
With initial supplies of a vaccine expected to be limited, the draft plan calls for about 156,500 paid and unpaid workers in healthcare settings with potentially infectious patients to be vaccinated first.
Vaccinations would follow for first responders, food packaging and distribution workers, public school employees and students, and those at increased risk from grave illness due to age or underlying medical conditions, including nursing home residents.
Vaccination sites would at first be limited to hospitals and satellite facilities where social distancing and infection control can be practiced.
As vaccines are offered to a larger population, the draft plan says, distribution sites would expand to include pharmacies, doctor’s offices, public health sites, including mobile centers, and federally qualified health centers.
COVID-19 vaccinations would eventually be integrated into routine vaccination programs statewide.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 4:27 PM.
