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MFP Contributor
Positive signs are emerging in Mississippi’s fight against COVID-19, with a continued decline in case transmission and new hospitalizations paired with an increasingly effective vaccination program. But racial disparity in the delivery of the vaccine remains an issue the state has yet to solve.
As Mississippi’s 2021 legislative session unfolds, two currents are competing to respond to 2020’s tumultuous election. One seeks to expand voting access, dismantling barriers for voter registration, the casting of absentee ballots and the return of the franchise to previously incarcerated residents. The other current is far more punitive and is more popular with the state’s supermajority Republican Party that controls the Governor’s Mansion and both chambers at the Capitol.
In his annual State of the State address Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves memorialized a long, cruel 2020 from the steps of the Mississippi Capitol. Behind the governor lay nearly a year of an uncontained pandemic and a hospital system just beginning to contain the crush of the virus’ worst wave. Still, Reeves struck an undeniably triumphant note with his address.
Mississippi is set to receive 37,000 first doses of COVID-19 vaccine each week, mostly intended for Mississippi State Department of Health drive-through clinics, putting a long road ahead of the effort to reach herd immunity through vaccination. At that vaccination rate, it would take roughly 57 weeks to fully vaccinate the population of the state, just over a year and a month in all.
With the COVID-19 vaccine now available to many Mississippians, the state now has the opportunity to make the winter spike the last mass outbreak of the disease. The Mississippi Free Press has compiled information from expert sources on the contents, effects and value of the COVID-19 vaccines available to the public.
Like most residents of the state’s long-term care facilities, Adam Booker is part of a distinctly at-risk community in the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet due to extended delays in delivering the vaccine, Booker is not sure when he’ll receive his first shot. The ponderous delay is baffling to him.
Mississippi’s rapidly shifting vaccination plan has hit a sudden roadblock: All doses allocated to the Mississippi State Department of Health’s public delivery system have been accounted for, putting an end to public access to new doses of the vaccine, outside private clinics, until February.
Mississippians age 65 or older and those 18 or older with pre-existing conditions may now schedule a COVID-19 vaccination, putting access ahead of schedule as the State looks to rapidly improve its vaccine rollout. Whether supplies of the vaccine and delivery of the doses can keep pace with the rapid new schedule remains to be seen.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
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The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).