Mississippi requests federal aid as hospital admissions continue to rise at 'staggering rate'
Aug. 12—TUPELO — As the University of Mississippi Medical Center constructs a 50-bed field hospital in a parking garage for a federal disaster medical team to treat patients and the Mississippi State Department of Health has inquired about having the USNS Comfort hospital ship bring aid to Mississippi, positive COVID-19 cases continue to increase at an alarming rate.
The mood inside the Mississippi State Department of Health is grim.
"It's been kind of a hard time around here," State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, sounding exhausted and demoralized, said during a Wednesday press briefing.
Dobbs, who has been at the forefront of the state's efforts to stem the rising tide of the virus's delta variant, said he feels as if he's an air traffic controller.
"Every day, I'm watching two airliners collide, and I'm constantly warning, we're constantly warning to change course. And we never do," he said.
Worst of all, Dobbs said, is that most of the deaths could have been prevented.
'A different surge'
In the fourth wave of COVID-19 cases in Mississippi, caused by the highly contagious delta variant, MSDH is reporting more deaths in people under the age of 50.
The daily average number of cases for the past week is 2,700, which Dobbs said is "far higher than in any previous peak we've seen."
Mississippi reported 3,163 new COVID-19 cases and 25 deaths on Wednesday, one day after the highest single-day case count with 3,488 new cases. There were also 36 deaths reported Tuesday.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said that 26% of the 61 people reportedly killed by the virus in the past two days were under the age of 50. Several deaths occurred among individuals in their 20s. Among the dead were two pregnant women.
The number of deaths reported each day has not risen at the same rapid pace as cases and hospitalizations. Dobbs said there's a much sharper increase in daily cases now than there was in fall/winter 2020, and it takes weeks for cases to translate into deaths.
For example, if someone contracts COVID, it can take a week before they're hospitalized, and they can spend weeks on a ventilator before dying, Dobbs said.
"It's risen so quickly, we don't have that sort of backlog of folks who were sitting on the ventilators for weeks who are now not making it," Dobbs said. "It's a different surge. Because it's so happened so very quickly, we're going to see a lot of deaths in coming days. It's just inevitable."
A 'staggering rate' of hospitalizations
New hospitalizations continue at a "staggering rate," Dobbs said, and daily admissions have now surpassed those seen during the worst of the winter surge, which was the previous peak.
Dobbs said 7% to 8% of individuals who test positive for COVID-19 end up in the hospital.
"So every day we report 1,000 cases, we're going to have 70, 80 new patients being hospitalized, and this is on top of an already full health care system," Dobbs said.
Based on historical data, Dobbs estimates 15% of Mississippians hospitalized because of COVID-19 don't make it home to their families. And about a third of those in an ICU, and two-thirds of those on a ventilator, won't survive.
The vast majority, 97%, of new cases are unvaccinated. Because of rapid transmission, there is a spillover into other parts of the population, including older people, people with weakened immune systems, etc. Dobbs said 11% of those hospitalized are vaccinated, and 17% of those who die are vaccinated.
The median age of breakthrough cases, which are positive COVID-19 cases among folks who are vaccinated, is 78 years old. And more than half of those are immune compromised.
Hospitals are hurting
There's an ongoing shortage of hospital staff to care for patients statewide. As ICU beds become available, they're filled immediately.
Jim Craig, Senior Deputy and Director of Health Protection, said that at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, there were 10 ICU beds open briefly. But with 238 patients on hold for those beds in emergency rooms around the state, they were gone quickly.
"The situation in many of our hospitals is much worse than what we saw last week, and I think worse than what we saw during our peak earlier this year," Craig said. "Our COVID System of Care continues to be active and mandatory for all of the hospitals in the state. Its purpose is to help transfer patients for critical care services that just can't be accommodated by our normal referral process."
MSDH reached out to hospitals to assess staffing needs, put together a request from 73 hospitals and is working with the federal government to see what type of aid can be brought to Mississippi to meet COVID staffing needs, including the possibility of using a United States Navy hospital ship.
"We asked the HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) what would be the possibility of us looking at one of the hospital ships — either the USNS Mercy or the USNS Comfort," Craig said. "USNS Comfort is a resource that is not necessarily available, but could be available, so we began conversations with them. The way that you do that is to put a request in for the resource, so we have requested information about how the USNS Comfort and/or its resources, could be the staff from the Comfort, could come and provide assistance in the state of Mississippi."
'A long way to go'
Even as cases and hospitalizations increase and Mississippi's situation grows dire, the number of vaccinations has more than tripled from this time a month ago, Dobbs said.
After reaching a low of 19,956 doses administered between June 27 and July 3, vaccinations increased throughout July and August — up to 61,822 doses administered from Aug. 1 to Aug. 7.
But there's still a long way to go.
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"I just want to reiterate this point because I think it's true and more obvious than ever: People are either going to get the vaccine or they're going to get COVID," Dobbs said. "And this delta variant is so contagious, leading to so much death and misery, that we really need to do everything we can to prevent transmission.
"Please, if you're not vaccinated, go ahead and get vaccinated," Dobbs said.
Byers added that COVID-19 has killed more than 7,700 Mississippians since the start of the pandemic. Vaccinations, he said, have killed none.
