Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves extends COVID-19 state of emergency order another 30 days
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced Friday that he will extend for 30 more days the State of Emergency order to ensure resources are available in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This extension will ease the process of marshaling additional resources for our response (that I described yesterday), allow our system of care to continue to transfer patients to hospitals where treatment is available, ensure expanded access to tele-medicine and will keep options open for use of the great men and women of the MS National Guard,” Reeves said in a statement Friday.
Once again, Reeves said he will not be issuing any lockdowns, mask mandates or other new measures to battle the increase in COVID-19 cases in Mississippi because of the delta variant.
Reeves said the decision to extend the state of emergency was made in coordination with State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and Stephen McCraney, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden issued a mandate requiring employees of large companies with 100 or more workers to be vaccinated or testing weekly for the coronavirus.
The order includes a mandate for vaccinations or testing for federal employees, a measure Reeves and other Republican leaders are vehemently against.
“Biden’s unconstitutional order is part of a war on working-class Americans, threatening their wallet if they do not comply, Reeves said a tweet Friday. “It is the worst possible way to grow confidence in the vaccine, and beyond that it is wrong. We will use every tool to stop it.”
The day before, Reeves immediately sounded off about the president’s orders.
“The President has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business,” Reees said in another tweet. “The vaccine itself is life-saving, but this unconstitutional move is terrifying. This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants. ten another comment, the governor said a measure Reeves objects to.
As of Friday, Mississippi has had 460,312 total coronavirus cases and 8,905 deaths, according to the state health department..
On Wednesday, Dr. Paul Byers announced a seventh child died of COVID in Mississippi. The children was under a year old.
“It’s been a rough month and a half,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Wednesday.
In addition, eight pregnant women have recently died of COVID-19 in Mississippi. All of the woman were unvaccinated, Dobbs said.
Mississippi has seen a surge in COVID cases in the last month and a half and hospitalizations are hitting record numbers with fewer ICU beds available for patients.
Mississippi is also among the state with the lowest vaccination rates, though the numbers have slowly started to improve in recent weeks.
In addition, health officials have started to see a decline in the number of new cases since the latest surge.
