‘We are not panicking.’ Reeves tweets response plan to Mississippi’s COVID-19 crisis
Mississippi needs 920 health care workers to battle the state’s COVID-19 surge in the near future, Gov. Tate Reeves said on Facebook Wednesday.
The state is asking other states for additional personnel. If they can’t help, Mississippi will turn to FEMA.
That announcement was part of what looks to be the governor’s most significant public comments on COVID-19 in Mississippi since the state’s fourth wave began, pushing hospitals almost to the breaking point. He has not held a press conference about the pandemic since April.
“We are not panicking,” he wrote on Facebook. “As we do with every emergency (tornado, hurricane, flooding, ice storm, and this pandemic), we are calmly making decisions based on the best available data to manage the situation and mitigate its impact on our people.”
The state’s COVID-19 State of Emergency is due to expire on Aug. 15. Reeves said he will make a decision in the next 48 hours as to whether it should be extended.
Reeves wrote that the “real challenge” facing Mississippi during its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is not lack of beds, but lack of staffing.
“Unfortunately, I’ve been advised hospitals throughout Mississippi have lost nearly 2,000 nurses over the last year,” he wrote. “The reason for the shortage can be debated in the future…..the task at hand is to help backfill these vacancies to protect the integrity of our healthcare system.”
In addition to seeking reinforcements from other states and the federal government, the state has delayed elective surgeries through Aug. 15.
Reeves said five ICU beds at both the Veterans Administration hospitals in Jackson and Biloxi are now available to the public. The state also will open a 50-bed facility in the parking garage at the University of Mississippi Medical Center no later than Friday, and possibly another in Jackson as well as Hattiesburg.
“MSDH and MEMA have requested an additional 10 teams to open new sites — in addition to the 41 sites that we already have in the state — to administer monoclonal anti-bodies treatment — a treatment that has proven to significantly reduce hospitalizations for patients with COVID.”
Reeves also seemed to hit back at those who have wondered why he has been nearly silent in public as cases accelerate and ICU beds fill up across the state.
“As you can see, in spite of the angry rhetoric coming from so many, our emergency management team is doing what it does — we are calmly dealing with an ever-changing environment to meet the needs of Mississippi,” he wrote.
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 2:28 PM.
