25,000 vaccines to reach MS hospitals in days as doctors write emotional open letter
The first coronavirus vaccine doses will be shipped to Mississippi starting as early as Monday, state epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Friday.
He said manufacturers of the Pfizer vaccine — approved by an FDA panel Thursday and expected to get the FDA’s green-light Friday evening — would ship 25,000 doses to hospitals at some point between Monday and Wednesday next week, allowing frontline workers treating patients to get the vaccine.
Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Mississippi State Medical Association and state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Byers said he anticipated every hospital in the state would be able to receive doses in that initial distribution. But he sounded a note of realism amid the good news.
“We’re not getting a lot of vaccine,” he said.
Byers said he expected that in the following week, Mississippi would begin receiving not only the Pfizer vaccine but also the Moderna vaccine. At that point, staff and residents in long-term care facilities start being vaccinated.
Next up will be more doses for hospitals and for health workers in other settings, like COVID-19 testing sites.
The vaccine logistics were the hopeful half of an otherwise bleak conversation. The doctors called the state’s recent surge in cases “frightening,” “really rough,” and “mind-boggling.”
In the past two weeks, Byers noted, the state had added 25,000 new coronavirus cases, compared to 14,000 in the two weeks prior to that.
During the previous peak in late summer, the highest number of new cases in one day was 1,775. That record has been shattered several times over in November and December, when the state has reported more than 2,000 cases on six days so far.
Earlier in the day, Dobbs announced that all hospitals in the state would have to postpone elective surgeries starting Tuesday. At the meeting Friday afternoon, he said he’d been fielding calls from doctors asking when elective surgeries would be postponed.
Dobbs said that about 10% of COVID-19 patients are hospitalized, so about 230 of the 2,327 people whose positive cases were reported Friday could end up in the hospital. That would far surpass the state’s current peak for single-day hospitalizations of 174.
As strain on the hospitals grows, Dobbs said, the only option will be for hospitals to share resources and commit to taking turns accepting one more patient, even when they’re technically at capacity.
“Everybody could almost always just take one more,” he said.
‘We have held your very hearts’
On Thursday, the MSMA released an emotional “open letter” to the people of Mississippi.
The unprecedented recent surge in COVID-19 cases, they wrote, has placed an “unbearable and unsustainable strain” on healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, hospitals and medical facilities statewide.
“We appeal to you, not just as healthcare professionals, but as your partners in health, and as your neighbors, friends, and family,” the letter said. “We have been your trusted source of quality healthcare from the birth of your children to the birth of your grandchildren. We have held your very hearts in our hands for complex surgeries and have helped you determine cancer treatment regimens.”
The writers, MSMA President W. Mark Horne, Board of Trustees Chair Jennifer Bryon and Executive Director Claude Brunson asked Mississippians to take three steps: wear masks, avoid gatherings, and wash your hands.
This holiday season calls for establishing “new traditions” with household members and forgoing in-person events, they wrote.
“Just as the virus does not care about political party, it also is not aware that it is a holiday season, and it loves indoor crowds,” the letter said. “The virus is 20 times more likely to spread indoors versus outdoors.”
Dobbs and Horne emphasized that Mississippi has seen about 5,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019.
“There’s more deaths at every age,” Horne said.
