MSDH COVID-19 Update: Rapid rise of confirmed COVID-19 patients

The past two days have both set new records for daily COVID cases in the Magnolia state with more than 7,000 being reported Thursday.

Today, the Mississippi State Department of Health held a press conference addressing the spike in COVID cases we’re seeing right now.

According to state epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers, more than 70 percent of deaths over the last month have been in unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals

While hospitals are facing a lower surge with omicron than with delta, they are still reporting daily increases of COVID confirmed cases.

Currently, there are 1,034 COVID-19 patients in the hospital with 85 in the ICU, two of which are pediatric cases.

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says vaccines and boosters are making all the difference in omicron patients. “I do want to reiterate the importance of vaccination. We’ve seen how useful that is in protecting people from becoming ill and also having severe illness. There is a growing body of data that strongly supports having a booster not only provides neutralizing antibodies and protective immunity from the omicron variant, but as we’ve seen and Dr. Byers shared only two percent of the deaths we’ve seen in the past month are related to folks who have been boosted.”

As for testing, 50,000 additional rapid antigen tests are arriving in Mississippi next week.