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 Saturday, December 5:
New cases: 1,942| New Deaths: 33
Total Hospitalizations: 1,188
Total cases: 163,458|Total Deaths: 3,949
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 54 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.
After a record reporting of 2,457 new cases on Wednesday, the current seven-day average of 1,605 is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak.
During a news conference yesterday, Gov. Tate Reeves denied that Mississippi had hit a new record for case spread, even though the rolling average had already surpassed the previous high of 1,381 in the summer.
On Wednesday, the state health department issued new guidelines on distancing, recommending that people avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their home or nuclear family.
Mississippi also hit a new high for confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations on both Sunday and Monday, with the rolling average having increased 68% since the start of November. The rolling averages for ICU patients and people on ventilators are up 45% and 88%, respectively, in that time. Total hospitalizations, which includes suspected and confirmed cases, are still below the record set in August.
Thirteen major hospitals are without ICU capacity, according to this week’s health department numbers. Currently, 86% of the state’s ICU beds are full — including 96% capacity among the highest level COVID-care centers — and COVID-19 patients are filling 30% of those spots.
On the county level, Choctaw (17% increase in the last week), Kemper (15%), Rankin (14%), Jefferson (12%) and Stone (12%) counties saw the sharpest rise in cases this last week.
The Delta continues to accumulate the most cases per capita out of anywhere in the state. Of the 15 counties with the highest rates, 11 are in the Delta.
The state health department reported 128,746 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
Restauranteur Jeff Good, co-owner of Bravo, Broadstreet and Sal & Mookies in Jackson, Mississippi, talks with Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey about his powerful opinion piece published (link below) on CNN.com. Good lays out what will be required for restaurants and small businesses to survive the next few months until the COVID-19 vaccines are widely distributed and “normal” can be achieved again. He also talks about how he and his business have had to adapt to all the changes the pandemic has brought.
Lawmakers could postpone the 2021 legislative session due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Legislative leaders are discussing whether to postpone the bulk of the 2021 legislative session until later in the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mandates of the state Constitution require the Legislature to convene the 2021 session on Jan. 5, 2021. Discussions have been held on convening that day, addressing some time sensitives issues and recessing until a later date. Early March has been discussed as a possible time to reconvene, according to sources close to legislative leaders.
It does not appear a decision has been reached on recessing the session. There also appears to be some major opposition to the proposal.
“I just don’t see us doing that, not while schools are open and teachers and others are working,” said House Education Chair Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach. “I think the Legislature needs to be working, too.”
House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, were not available for comment Friday on the possible early recess.
In recent days, COVID-19 infections in the state have exceeded past peaks, resulting in many of the state’s largest hospitals, including in the Jackson area, exceeding capacity.
Having 174 legislators and all the additional personnel associated with a legislative session meeting in Jackson could result in a sizable increase in coronavirus cases. During this year’s session, scores of legislators and staff, including Gunn and Hosemann, contracted the coronavirus while in session at the Capitol.
“Obviously, there is great concern with the ICU bed situation in the Jackson area and we would not want to do anything to contribute to that problem,” said Sen. Scott DeLano, R-Biloxi. “The safety of our membership and the public is the greatest concern and priority.’
Whenever the Legislature meets in 2021, there are expected to be extraordinary safety precautions in place. For instance, the House leadership has already opted to suspend its page program for the upcoming session.
Postponing the bulk of the session until March possibly could provide time for a COVID-19 vaccine to become available, theoretically reducing the risk of spreading the virus. In addition, it would give legislators more time to look at state tax collections to gather more information on the amount of revenue that would be available to craft a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1. There remains uncertainty on how the pandemic will impact the economy in the coming months and thus affect revenue collections.
In 2020, as the coronavirus began to surge in March, the Legislature took a long break and ultimately remained in session until October dealing with issues surrounding COVID-19. The legislative session was scheduled to end in early May in 2020.
In 2021, the session is scheduled to conclude in April. To extend the session past the scheduled end date (known as sine die), a two-thirds majority of lawmakers in each chamber must agree. If the decision is made in January to recess until a later date, that also will require a two-thirds vote.
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 Friday, December 4:
New cases: 2,480| New Deaths: 37
Total Hospitalizations: 1,160
Total cases: 161,516|Total Deaths: 3,916
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 54 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.
After a record reporting of 2,457 new cases on Wednesday, the current seven-day average of 1,605 is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak.
During a news conference yesterday, Gov. Tate Reeves denied that Mississippi had hit a new record for case spread, even though the rolling average had already surpassed the previous high of 1,381 in the summer.
On Wednesday, the state health department issued new guidelines on distancing, recommending that people avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their home or nuclear family.
Mississippi also hit a new high for confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations on both Sunday and Monday, with the rolling average having increased 68% since the start of November. The rolling averages for ICU patients and people on ventilators are up 45% and 88%, respectively, in that time. Total hospitalizations, which includes suspected and confirmed cases, are still below the record set in August.
Thirteen major hospitals are without ICU capacity, according to this week’s health department numbers. Currently, 86% of the state’s ICU beds are full — including 96% capacity among the highest level COVID-care centers — and COVID-19 patients are filling 30% of those spots.
On the county level, Choctaw (17% increase in the last week), Kemper (15%), Rankin (14%), Jefferson (12%) and Stone (12%) counties saw the sharpest rise in cases this last week.
The Delta continues to accumulate the most cases per capita out of anywhere in the state. Of the 15 counties with the highest rates, 11 are in the Delta.
The state health department reported 128,746 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Tate Reeves speaks to supporters during his election watch party at Table 100 in Flowood on Aug. 6, 2019.
As COVID-19 rates continue to set new records and health experts issue dire warnings about dwindling hospital bed space to accommodate patients with the virus, the chief executive officer of one of Mississippi’s largest hospitals personally hosted an in-person fundraiser Wednesday night for Gov. Tate Reeves.
Kent Nicaud, CEO of Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, hosted the fundraiser on Wednesday evening at his home in Pass Christian. In a phone interview with Mississippi Today on Thursday, Nicaud said he and attendees of the fundraiser were “very conscious of all the social distancing.”
Kent Nicaud, CEO of Memorial Hospital at Gulfport
“This was a very small group of people, and the reason it was at my home was because of the ability to keep everyone separate,” Nicaud said, pointing out that his home is 11,000 square feet. “There were probably never more than 21, 22 people there at one time. This was an event that I felt was meeting safety criteria, and the governor was already in town for a tourism commission and chamber of commerce. This was an opportunity for people to talk to (Reeves) about specific things. We did it safely.”
An executive order Reeves issued in November mandates that group gatherings in Harrison County, where Nicaud’s home is located, exceed no more than 10 people in a single indoor space and no more than 50 in an outdoor space. Nicaud said that guests of the fundraiser were spread out both indoors and outdoors on multiple floors of his home.
It is unclear whether more than 10 people gathered indoors at any point during the event, which included wait staff and bartenders in addition to the guests. Nicaud reiterated “there was plenty of distance” and that everyone wore masks.
“Between what Kent (Nicaud) brought and the governor brought, we could’ve all taken a bath in hand sanitizer,” said Frank Bordeaux, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, who attended the fundraiser.
Even with the protocols in place, the fundraiser directly counters guidance issued by health experts as Mississippi has seen record COVID-19 numbers almost every day this week.
After a record of 2,457 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Wednesday, the current seven-day case average is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak, making this the worst point of the pandemic to date.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who oversees the Mississippi State Department of Health, specifically advised Mississippians to avoid “social events or parties” on the morning of the fundraiser.
“All residents of Mississippi should avoid any social gathering that includes individuals outside of the nuclear family or household,” Dobbs wrote on Wednesday. “MSDH recommends that Mississippians only participate in work, school or other absolutely essential activities.”
Health experts and even leaders of large hospitals in the state have recently issued bleak warnings of the state’s worsening COVID-19 peak period, specifically citing a sharp decline in bed space for virus patients.
“As of 6:46 am today, UMMC’s bed status is -31 beds, which means that 31 people are admitted but waiting for a bed to become available. Who will be #32 or #33 or #34?” Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s only academic health center and largest hospital, tweeted on Wednesday. “Nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and many others are doing their part. It will be a long time before they recover from the trauma they are living.”
Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, which Nicaud oversees, had just five available beds on the day of the fundraiser, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health, and just one available ICU bed.
When asked if the leader of a hospital should host an in-person event during the recent spike in cases, Nicaud said: “We’ve got to be responsible for our safety individually.”
“I do believe that putting people at risk is a problem, and I do not feel that happened at all,” he said. “If I didn’t feel like we could’ve accomplished the safety, we wouldn’t have had (the fundraiser). There’s not a mandate to quarantine. I think everyone has to find their own comfort zone. I think that’s going to be our new normal.”
Nicaud, who became CEO of Memorial Hospital in 2018, is a longtime political ally of Reeves, recently serving on the governor’s campaign finance committee and giving at least $30,000 to the governor’s 2019 campaign. Reeves also appointed him to the Mississippi Coronavirus Task Force.
Reeves has downplayed the severity of the quickly spreading virus in recent days, saying last week he wasn’t going to cave to pressure from “so-called experts” calling for a statewide mask mandate. Those calling for such an order last week included leaders of the Mississippi Hospital Association, Dobbs and Woodward.
Before the fundraiser on Wednesday night, Reeves and dozens of people attended a conference he organized – the 2020 Governor’s Conference on Tourism – at the IP casino ballroom in Biloxi.
When asked for comment on whether the fundraiser and the conference were conducted safely, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff Parker Briden said: “The (fundraiser) event with health care professionals and the tourism conference were conducted with a focus on safety — with masks and social distancing.”
Curtis Wilkie’s shoes will be difficult to fill. If you don’t know who Curtis Wilkie is, here’s a small taste: Curtis recently retired as a Fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University of Mississippi after a long career as both a journalist, author and Southern political observer. For many years, he was a journalist for The Boston Globe and he covered everything from the 1976 Jimmy Carter Presidential campaign to the bombing of the Marines’ barrack in Beirut, Lebanon. He is, in true Southern tradition, a master storyteller and has one of the best voices this side of Morgan Freeman. There isn’t much that he hasn’t seen or done. He drew a map of the events during the 1962 Ole Miss riot and interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr. two weeks before his death. He drank beer with Billy Carter while Jimmy taught Sunday school. He’s a brilliant teacher, father, grandfather and friend. He’s also one of the people in Mississippi I look up to the most.
Godspeed in retirement Curtis. Look forward to seeing you again soon.
After a long journalism career and 18 years of teaching, Curtis Wilkie is retiring from the University of Mississippi. (Photo by Billy Schuerman/The Daily Mississippian.)
OXFORD — Prominent political writer Curtis Wilkie had planned to “ride off quietly into the sunset” after retiring this month from his post as Fellow at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University of Mississippi, but his students and colleagues couldn’t send him off without at least a little fanfare.
While Wilkie may have renounced his title as a Southerner in his early years, he soon became one of the definitive voices of storytelling in the South; his students and colleagues knew that after 18 years of teaching, his stepping down as professor marked the end of an era.
On the morning of his last class, Wilkie’s students surprised him with cookies, milk, silver party hats, and a cookie cake that read “Congratulations Curtis!” in red and blue icing. Jokingly asking if the party hat was a dunce cap, Wilkie fumbled getting the hat over his face shield and laughed at his appearance on the Zoom call once it was securely on his head.
Today, Curtis Wilkie taught his final class as an Ole Miss professor and was honored by his students with a surprise retirement party. After retiring from an illustrious reporting career, he spent 19 years imparting invaluable wisdom and skills upon our students. pic.twitter.com/BMQNFmRkiZ
— UM School of Journalism and New Media (@umjourimc) November 17, 2020
As Wilkie passed out final papers, he asked the students for the final thoughts about the 2020 Presidential Election season, the topic of this class. Students made comments about the recount in Georgia and President Trump’s legal challenges, and Wilkie snuck in a story about running into Joe Biden at the 2000 RNC convention and Biden asking to come visit the Grove on a gameday. Long after he had officially dismissed the class, students lingered to hear him tell stories one last time about covering the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including the day James Meredith was shot and interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. just weeks before he died.
A 1963 UM grad, Wilkie worked as a journalist for nearly four decades, starting out as a reporter for the Clarksdale Press Register before working as a White House correspondent for the Boston Globe and later founding the Globe’s Middle Eastern Bureau. He decided to retire from professional journalism in the late 1990s through a confluence of factors, including his eligibility for his pension, the buyout of The Boston Globe by The New York Times, and his desire not to have to travel as much. He has often joked that he decided to try teaching because he didn’t play golf and he needed something to do, but he also said that he’s been grateful to find a second career that he enjoyed so much.
“I don’t consider myself an academic at all, I’m just an old journalist who got recruited to teach and enjoys it,” Wilkie said.
Wilkie describes his teaching style as “ad-hoc” with a chuckle. His courses frequently rely on a discussion of current events, meaning that he prepares each week but has never been able to reuse a lecture.
“Many of my courses are kinda oddballs anyway because many of them, particularly ones with the Honors College, have been courses that we just invented,” Wilkie said. Those “invented” courses have included the Presidency and the Press, Political Pundits and the Presidential Election, Presidential Debates, and Journalism’s Trump Problem.
Devna Bose, a reporter for the Charlotte Observer and 2019 UM graduate, has never forgotten how Wilkie introduced himself on the first day of the Presidential Debates class she took with him. “You can all call me Curtis. I barely got my bachelor’s degree, so don’t call me doctor. And you” — looking at his grandson Davis McCool, who was also taking the class — “you can call me PopPop.”
Bose recalled how easily Wilkie commanded respect in the classroom.
“He’s such a dynamic person…such an unassuming character,” Bose said. “He’s this soft-spoken, sweet, sweet man and it’s shocking as a student to realize how much he’s accomplished in the industry.”
Bose said she didn’t learn to appreciate being from Mississippi until her later years of college, and that shift happened in large part because of professors like Wilkie. “The way he has loved (Mississippi) has taught me to love it better,” Bose said.
Adam Ganucheau, the editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today and a 2014 UM graduate, said that at times he’s struggled with whether or not it was worth it to be a journalist, and it was the encouragement of Wilkie that kept him in the field.
“I’d written a story that a lot of Republicans were coming after me for, calling me out by name…and he said, ‘You have to remember that you live in a state where Republicans pretty much rule the roost. Your job as a journalist is to hold powerful people to account, and in Mississippi, there aren’t a lot of Democrats to hold to account because there aren’t a lot of Democrats in places of power.’”
Ganucheau emphasized Wilkie’s personal dedication to the success of his students long after they graduate, telling a story of Wilkie taking Ganucheau and a source out to dinner in the Delta so that Ganucheau could get the access he needed.
“If I’ve been a good teacher, I think in part it’s because I never forgot what it was like to be a student,” Wilkie said, adding that he understood well how college could be a conflicting time in a student’s life. He himself had dropped out at one point, and flunked a class at another.
When asked what he has tried to teach young journalists, Wilkie said that credibility is everything.
“You’ve got to strive to be accurate and honest and fair in your reporting, because if you’re not, people are going to quickly realize it and they’re not going to trust you, and your usefulness as a journalist is finished.”
Wilkie frequently brought influential and well-respected industry leaders to his classes over the years, which he feels is an important part of the experience he brings. Some of his guests over the years have included Janet H. Brown, Richard Ford, Tom Brokaw, Andy Lack, and Paige Williams.
“There’s nothing like practical experience — I think that’s what I was able to bring to [the journalism department],” he said. “But I’m certainly not the only one.”
Wilkie’s second act also afforded him the opportunity to write, something he plans to continue. He is the author of four books, Arkansas Mischief, Dixie, Road to Camelot, and The Fall of the House of Zeus plus a collection of his reported essays, Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians, and Other Persons of Interest. His latest book, When Evil Lived in Laurel, about an FBI informant who helped to bring down the KKK chapter responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing in Mississippi, will be published next year.
“I didn’t think I’d ever write a book,” Wilkie said. “I was up in Memphis on assignment and got a phone call at my hotel from a nice lady who was a literary agent wanting to know if I would be interested in co-writing a book (with Jim McDougal, a friend of the Clintons and co-founder of Whitewater Development Corporation.) I said ‘Not really, I’ve got a real job, and besides, I think Jim McDougal’s a bit of a kook.’ And she was very charming and kept me on the phone, finally told me how much money was involved and I said ‘Well, you know, suddenly this Jim McDougal sounds like a very interesting character.’”
Wilkie discovered that McDougal was funny, a good raconteur, and honest about his guilt in the Whitewater scandal. Wilkie and McDougal wrote Arkansas Mischief and Deborah Grosvenor, the “nice lady” who made the initial call, became Wilkie’s literary agent.
The Fall of the House of Zeus, about the downfall of trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs, was a project born of Wilkie’s curiosity and frustration.
“Dick was a friend of mine, I knew so many people involved, and I found myself asking ‘What is going on in this crazy case?’” Wilkie said. “I wasn’t finding the answers from the newspaper stories, so I said to myself, ‘Goddammit, I’ll put on my reportorial hat and find out myself and write a book.’”
Wilkie said that it was easier than he thought to transition into writing books. Having written 5,000-word features regularly for the Boston Globe Magazine, Wilkie approached a book as 20 magazine stories. The process of compiling endnotes, instead of using in-text attribution, did prove to be more laborious than anticipated, but he particularly enjoyed the transition to writing in a third-person narrative style.
His experience writing magazine stories made Wilkie an excellent candidate to teach feature writing, a course that has cemented his relationship with many students.
Laura Santhanam, a PBS NewsHour reporter and 2005 UM graduate, says she can still always hear Wilkie’s voice in the back of her head telling her to “keep an eye for compelling details.” Santhanam said that Wilkie approaches teaching and writing with a humility that makes him accessible in spite of the awe-inspiring experiences he’s had.
“(Wilkie) has been such a reliable and resourceful and dedicated pair of eyes on the most powerful people this country has produced for several presidencies,” Santhanam said.
Steven Godfrey, a writer for Banner Society and 2005 UM grad, said that “He may not be as famous as some TV personalities, but he’s your favorite journalist’s favorite journalist, and he would die if he heard me saying this right now.”
“He instantly had so much credibility and gravitas, so much acumen, that he commanded the respect of the room, but he also did it with total benevolence,” said Godfrey. Godfrey said that he and his peers sought Wilkie’s approval so much more than Wilkie realized.
In Godfrey’s eyes, Wilkie embodies fearlessness in the face of authority. “If you go through his work, you see a human being who is able to balance his love of place (Mississippi) with his absolutely uncompromising assessment of its negativities…Mississippi is a hard place to be fearless. You can’t sneeze in Mississippi without everyone finding out.”
The retirement celebrations have made Wilkie smile, but he said it’s also been a little embarrassing to have so much attention paid to him because he doesn’t believe he deserves any particular acclaim.
“(The celebrations and interviews) reek like I’m craving publicity, and that’s never been my style,” Wilkie said.
Billy Schuerman/The Daily Mississippian
After a long journalism career and 18 years of teaching, Curtis Wilkie is retiring from the University of Mississippi. (Photo by Billy Schuerman/The Daily Mississippian.)
Wilkie knew it was time to retire even before the coronavirus pandemic, realizing that he would be 80 this year. “Once you hit 80, it’s time to get out before you start embarrassing yourself,” he said, joking that he didn’t want spittle hitting students in the front row when he lectured.
Ganucheau said he has had mixed emotions about Wilkie’s retirement.
“The way that he cared for his students and not only sought to get them and keep them interested in journalism, but to help them through the problems…he has this generation of young minds that he has shaped,” he said. “I’m so happy for him and it’s a really great end to this crazy, long, storied career, but I also know that there’s going to be a lot of students who miss out on that (mentorship experience).”
When describing the relationship between his professional experience and his teaching style, Wilkie quoted a favorite line and then immediately kicked himself for not remembering the name of the author (it was from Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson): “I am a part of all that I have met.”
Editor’s note: Julia James, a senior at the University of Mississippi, originally reported this story for a class at the UM School of Journalism and New Media. Curtis Wilkie has participated in events sponsored by Mississippi Today. Dickie Scruggs, mentioned in the article, is a donor to Mississippi Today.
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 3:
New cases: 2,168| New Deaths: 28
Total Hospitalizations: 1,135
Total cases: 159,036|Total Deaths: 3,879
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 54 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.
After a record reporting of 2,457 new cases on Wednesday, the current seven-day average of 1,605 is now far past Mississippi’s summer peak.
During a news conference yesterday, Gov. Tate Reeves denied that Mississippi had hit a new record for case spread, even though the rolling average had already surpassed the previous high of 1,381 in the summer.
On Wednesday, the state health department issued new guidelines on distancing, recommending that people avoid all social gatherings with people outside of their home or nuclear family.
Mississippi also hit a new high for confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations on both Sunday and Monday, with the rolling average having increased 68% since the start of November. The rolling averages for ICU patients and people on ventilators are up 45% and 88%, respectively, in that time. Total hospitalizations, which includes suspected and confirmed cases, are still below the record set in August.
Thirteen major hospitals are without ICU capacity, according to this week’s health department numbers. Currently, 86% of the state’s ICU beds are full — including 96% capacity among the highest level COVID-care centers — and COVID-19 patients are filling 30% of those spots.
On the county level, Choctaw (17% increase in the last week), Kemper (15%), Rankin (14%), Jefferson (12%) and Stone (12%) counties saw the sharpest rise in cases this last week.
The Delta continues to accumulate the most cases per capita out of anywhere in the state. Of the 15 counties with the highest rates, 11 are in the Delta.
The state health department reported 128,746 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
