A bulk of Delta variant COVID-19 deaths are expected soon

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- Younger people in Mississippi with COVID-19 are starting to fill hospitals. The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 3,163 cases and 25 deaths Wednesday. The death toll is 61 people Tuesday and Wednesday combined. 26 percent of the deaths are people under 50 and the majority of people being admitted to the hospital are under 50. Health leaders say even people twenties are dying from the virus. As of Wednesday morning, 10 ICU beds were briefly available but 238 patients were on the waitlist. More kids are also being admitted to the hospital. MSDH reports 88 school outbreaks, so far, with more than 44 hundred students quarantined. Experts see little relief in sight. “If you remember the curve we had back in the fall and the winter, it was slow,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs of the Mississippi State Department of Health. “Then we had a really nasty jump after Halloween and a nasty one after Thanksgiving. So it’s a factor of the delay because we know it takes a while for folks to succumb to the illness and also it’s risen so quickly we don’t have that sort of backlog of folks who were sitting on the ventilators for a week who are now not making it. So it’s a different surge because it’s happened so very quickly that we’re going to see a lot of deaths in the coming days. It’s just inevitable.” The positive news in this surge of cases is that vaccination rates have tripled compared to last month.