South MS reports zero COVID-19 deaths for the first time since July. Check out the data.
South Mississippi recorded zero COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the first time since the delta wave’s onset in mid-July.
July 23 was the last time George, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River and Stone Counties reported no new deaths. Before then, zero-to-five deaths a day was typical in South Mississippi, except for a few outlying days.
Following July 23, however, new deaths averaged about eight per day until Oct. 14, when the six southernmost counties hit zero again.
Statewide on Thursday, 528 new cases and seven deaths were reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health.
The marker comes as the state in October has been recording case counts below 1,000, another novel trend following a particularly sick and deadly few months with the delta variant.
Statewide cases will soon hit 500,000 and 10,000 deaths, grave benchmarks that were expedited in August and September.
On July 19, State Medical Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs warned that the more contagious variant of COVID was in the state and trending upward, tweeting that the “4th wave is here.”
From July 19 to Oct. 13, Mississippi recorded 171,779 new coronavirus cases and 2,450 deaths.
Health officials continue to recommend vaccination, the best defense against the virus, as the probability that another wave is would come to the state is “extremely high,” according to Singing River Health System pulmonologist Dr. Ijlal Babar.
“I don’t think it’s the last wave,” he said during a Mississippi State Medical Association roundtable discussion on Friday. “And now what we see, we’ve got more people immune, but it’s a large section of the population, maybe a million, maybe 750,000 who are not immune, either because of natural infection or because of vaccination, and that does leave us very vulnerable for additional outbreaks.”
Southern counties still lag behind the rest of the state in vaccinations. Now, 45% of Mississippians have received both shots, with Harrison County at 39%, followed by Jackson County at 38% and Hancock at 30%.
This article and live event is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
