Mississippi on track to surpass one thousand COVID-19 related deaths

JACKSON, Miss. (WCBI) -With the news of Mississippi’s highest daily death toll, health officials say the state is on track to surpass one thousand COVID-19 deaths this month.

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said in a press conference today that COVID-19 is one of the leading causes of death in Mississippi.

A record day that was, unfortunately, expected.

The health department is already talking with hospitals across the state about activating the crisis standard of care plan.

Basically, that means to get care patients would be triaged and as the number of nurses decreases, staffing changes would have to be made.

Dobbs says the health care system in the state is overwhelmed now.

Health leaders expect another large surge of patients after Christmas and New Year’s.

“We have Er’s that can’t be Er’s So, people don’t have access to emergency room care because they are full of COVID ICU patients. We have ICU beds across the state that have two persons in a bed that’s made for one person. These are things that are happening now. Let me just be frank with you guys, it is bad and it is getting worse. It’s exactly what we anticipated. It’s not rocket science to look at the numbers and understand the modeling of what’s going to happen,” said Dr. Dobbs. “We did some modeling and predicted over the next few weeks we’ll see well over 400 or even close to 600 ICU patients in need of care. Now, the challenge is that we can’t take care of that many people. So, a lot of them are not going to make it and they are not going to make it because they don’t have access to care. This isn’t just COVID patients, it’s also non-COVID patients. It’s people with heart attacks, it’s strokes, it’s car wrecks.”

Mississippi has received more than 62 thousand vaccines for front line workers in hospitals.

Another 12 thousand will go to long-term care facilities.