Miss. health officials: Anticipate a turning point in COVID surge in the next few weeks

Omicron might loosen its grip on Mississippi in the next few weeks, health officials predicted Friday.

"We’re gonna continue to report out a lot of cases, but I really feel like we’re turning the corner,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said. “We’ll start trending down, I think, probably in the next couple of weeks."

Byers' optimism is in part driven by the numbers: decreased testing demand and a declining positivity rate.

However, he warned, continued high case counts and increased death rates are expected before the state will get relief from omicron. Most of the recent deaths have been in unvaccinated or unboosted people 65 and older, Byers said.

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"With omicron, especially, you really got to get that booster," State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. "It reduces hospitalization by 90%."

Hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and people on ventilators are at high levels, Byers said. However, he indicated that daily admission rates at hospitals are dropping.

Compared to the delta variant, omicron has not forced as many people to need ICU and ventilator care, Byers said. And hospital stays are half as long with omicron.

But more cases means more chance for hospitalization. On Wednesday, the state saw the highest single-day record of over 1,700 coronavirus-related hospitalizations, according the Mississippi State Department of Health data. It's a 64% growth in nearly three weeks.

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Of those 1,708 patients Wednesday, 328 were in intensive care units across the state and 192 were on ventilators. The last record-breaking count was reported Aug. 19, with 1,667 people hospitalized with COVID-19.

Mississippi hospitals are again bursting at the seams, much like during the delta surge. As of Friday, the most recent health department data showed 16 open ICU bedsacross the state, not only affecting COVID-19 patients, but anyone else who is needing critical care like heart attack and stroke victims.

Dobbs said the crisis mode in Mississippi hospitals currently is "worse than ever seen in the pandemic."

"Don’t go to ER if don’t have to," you Dobbs said "ERs are serving as accessory ICUs right now."

He encouraged those who are eligible to take advantage of the state's allocation of therapeutics to fight COVID-19. While sotrovimab, the remaining monoclonal antibody treatment approved for use in the United States that's effective against omicron is in short supply, Dobbs said other therapeutics are going unused in Mississippi.

"Thousands of doses are sitting on the shelf," he said, encouraging people who are high-risk or older to ask their physicians about using the therapeutics.

Oral antivirals — Paxlovid and molnupiravir — are pills to treat high-risk people infected with COVID-19. The pills can reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

Evusheld, a COVID-19 preventative, is a treatment for high-risk people who do not respond to the vaccines, such as transplant and cancer patients.

The preventative is administered to the state's comprehensive cancer centers and University of Mississippi Medical Center's transplant center.

Read more: Mississippi bill sets religious exemption on COVID vaccine requirements

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Omicron has driven Mississippi to its highest hospitalization rate yet