‘Tragic and amazing’ year of COVID: Mississippi is winning but the battle’s not over
The year since the first case of the coronavirus was detected in Mississippi has been frightening and tragic, the state’s top health officials said Monday, yet amazing and carried by heroes.
“This is something we’ve been anticipating,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. As public health officials, he said preparing for a pandemic is like a sports team preparing for the big game.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers and Senior Deputy Jim Craig joined him in a press conference to look back over the past year.
Dobbs described the moment he knew the coronavirus would affect Mississippi — when Byers came into his office with data and said, “I think this is gonna be the big one.”
“I didn’t think we’d be sitting here another year later still talking about this,” Byers said. “It has been a real adventure.”
Dobbs also held up the vial of the first vaccine doses given in the state on Dec. 14, which he, Byers, Craig and others received on camera to show its safety.
The media did its job getting information out to the public over the past year, he said. “Where we see destructiveness is in social media,” Dobbs said, and inaccuracies can spread quickly.
The idea that not enough time or study went into the vaccine is one of those misconceptions, he said.
Over a decade of research went into making the coronavirus vaccines, Dobbs said. The world was very fortunate that when COVID-19 hit, he said, vaccine makers were ready to shift from flu and other vaccines and apply for use with the coronavirus.
“In a way, it was done very quickly,” he said of the rollout. But the research goes back many years and meets the same standards as the flu, pneumonia and shingles vaccines, Dobbs said.
Is vaccine responsible for downward trend in cases?
Last week, more than 130,000 shots were given in Mississippi, Dobbs said, but that isn’t why the number of new cases and deaths have dropped steadily since the latest peak in mid-January, he said.
There haven’t been enough people vaccinated to explain the drop, he said. Through March 7, Mississippi has vaccinated 443,500 with the first dose of vaccine and 247,000 with the second dose.
“So we are starting to see an impact,” he said, but what got the decrease going was behavior and people not traveling as much after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were over.
“We do have spring break coming up, so it’s going to be important for us to be careful,” he said.
More vaccine is coming
More than half of those over age 75 and about half over 65 are vaccinated, Dobbs said.
“We are always trying to fine tune availability with eligibility,” Dobbs said, and more groups will be added after the most vulnerable people get their vaccine.
Mississippi opened vaccinations to those 50 and older and those with health issues, which he said is a “significant majority” of the state and more than have access to vaccinations in many other states.
Craig said last week around 7% of those with appointments at the state drive-thru vaccination sites were no-shows, which is pretty typical. When that happens, the doses are carried forward in system for the next day or over the weekend, he said, so they don’t go to waste and more appointments are soon available.
Year 2 and beyond
“COVID is real and we’re really winning,” Dobbs said.
While Gov. Tate Reeves took down the nearly statewide mask mandate last week, Dobbs said he’s seen Mississippians continue to practice “prudent behavior” and wear a mask in public.
He’s seeing a lot of optimism on the horizon as cases and deaths continue to fall, Dobbs said, but more challenges as other strains of the coronavirus are detected.
The big takeaway is how to take a year’s worth of lessons learned to create a better response to the next pandemic. That includes fixing a chronically underfunded and undermined public health system, he said.
There’s always money to chase the problem once it happens, he said, but public health needs steady investment instead of reactionary spending to be prepared when the next pandemic comes.
“Why do we want to do this again? We could spend a lot less money — let me say that again, a lot less money — with steady funding,” Dobbs said.
Craig agreed, saying a good place to start is to rebuild infrastructure for local health departments to where it used to be in the past.
“It’s just making sure that we have funding to maintain core public health,” Craig said.
