Gov. Tate Reeves announced today that a 50-bed field hospital at the University of Mississippi Medical Center will be open by Friday in a series of moves designed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic's fourth wave caused by the Delta variant.
The first-term Republican governor said he and state emergency managers “are calmly making decisions based on the best available data to manage the situation and mitigate its impact on our people.” The field hospital is in UMMC's parking garage.
He also said his State of Emergency declaration from March 2020 could be extended, with a final decision to be made in the next 48 hours.
Reeves also said the biggest challenge — despite a surge in hospitalizations and a lack of available intensive care unit beds statewide announced Monday by the state Department of Health — was an inadequate number of healthcare professionals statewide. He said the state is short 2,000 nurses and that the Department of Health says it needs at least 920 more healthcare workers immediately.
To that end, Reeves and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency have made a request to other states for additional help and, if the request can't be filled by other states, will go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for federal assistance.
The state Department of Health will also be transporting patients to ensure all available beds statewide are utilized.
ICU beds have already been added at U.S. Veteran's Administration hospitals in both Jackson and in Biloxi.
The Department of Health and MEMA are requesting 10 teams to open new sites to administer monoclonal antibody treatment in addition to the 41 already operational throughout the state.
Also, new 50-bed medical facilities could be opened in the Jackson and Hattiesburg markets.
According to data from the state Department of Health, there have been 3,163 new cases reported to the agency since 3 p.m. yesterday, with 25 new deaths.
Since the pandemic begin, 371,712 have tested positive for COVID-19, with 7,710 deaths, a 2.07 percent mortality rate.
According to MSDH data, 97 percent of the cases are among the unvaccinated, 90 percent of the COVID-19 related hospitalizations and 84 percent of deaths are among the unvaccinated as well.
There have been 2.295 million doses of the three vaccines administered statewide, with 1.284 million receiving at least one dose and 1.06 million receiving both.
