In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 15% of Mississippians hospitalized with COVID-19 died, a rate that places Mississippi above the national mortality rate in every period after the initial outbreak in the northeastern United States.
Dr. John Witcher, a Yazoo City emergency-room physician and general practitioner, has treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients over the past year. He is also unvaccinated for the virus and the leader of a small band of Mississippi health-care workers in their campaign against vaccine mandates under the umbrella of “Mississippi Against Vaccine Mandates.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled Dec. 1, 2021, oral arguments for the term’s most significant abortion case—Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Mississippi lawsuit aims squarely at the heart of the landmark Roe v. Wade precedent that has prohibited total abortion bans across the United States since 1973.
More Mississippians have now died from COVID-19 than died during the entirety of the Great Influenza pandemic that lasted from 1918 to 1919. The Mississippi State Department of Health reports that it has now confirmed at least 9,270 coronavirus deaths in the state since the novel coronavirus arrived in spring 2020.
The state board that oversees higher education in Mississippi voted today to prohibit all public colleges and universities from requiring COVID-19 vaccines as a condition of employment or enrollment. The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees made the decision following weeks of confusion over a previous vote in August.
The Mississippi State Department of Health’s Director of Health Protection Jim Craig warned that hospitals across the state are still filled with patients waiting to be transferred out of the emergency room and into intensive care unit beds.
Mississippi now leads the nation in COVID-19 deaths per 100,000, usurping New Jersey, an early pandemic hotspot that until last week had held the title for 15 months. The Magnolia State claimed the unenviable title following a month in which the delta variant surge pushed hospitals to the point of collapse with coronavirus patient levels at all-time highs for both children and adults.
The delta wave of COVID-19 continues to recede in Mississippi, with average case numbers dropping day after day since the late August peak. Today, the Mississippi State Department of Health announced 2,070 new reports of COVID-19, bringing the rolling seven-day average down to 1,633.
Mississippi State University is unlikely to implement a campus-wide vaccine mandate even after a majority of the institution’s Faculty Senate called on leaders to do so in a resolution they adopted during a meeting on Friday.
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