COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 2,261 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 17, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Thursday, December 17:

New cases: 2,261| New Deaths: 26

Total Hospitalizations: 1,316

Total cases: 187,904| Total Deaths: 4,320

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 61 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

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