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The coronavirus pandemic was mentioned just a handful of times during the Institutions of Higher Learning’s nearly two-hour-long meeting Thursday, even though classes at Mississippi’s public universities started this week amid the worst wave yet of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The sole discussion of the pandemic from the 12-member board was limited to a request on the finance agenda to suspend the IHL’s regular approval process for contracts and other agreements relating to the universities’ “ability to promptly and effectively provide for the safety and health of … students, employees and guests in dealing with the Covid19 pandemic.” 

The IHL meeting happened the same day that the State Board of Education, which oversees Mississippi’s K-12 schools, unanimously voted to allow school districts to implement hybrid learning through Oct. 31 due to the increase in COVID-19 cases among school-aged children. 

According to data from the Mississippi Department of Health, last week 20,334 students were in quarantine across 803 schools. More than 7,400 students, teachers and staff had tested positive for the virus. 

Because the universities are not required to report COVID cases to MSDH the same way K-12 schools are, it will be difficult to track the spread of the virus on campus or in the surrounding communities. Last year, the fall semester saw two outbreaks at Mississippi University for Women and UM. All eight universities had implemented comprehensive plans to keep faculty, staff and students safe that included moving courses online, reducing in-person class sizes, and shortening the fall semester to prevent the spread of coronavirus during Thanksgiving break.

Many of those measures won’t be taken this semester, despite all-time high case numbers and a delta variant that is more prominent in college-aged people. All universities are requiring students to wear masks in indoor facilities due to a directive from MSDH. 

None of the universities are requiring students or faculty to get vaccinated, the best prevention strategy against COVID-19, despite hundreds of faculty across the state requesting they do so. At University of Southern Mississippi, nearly 200 faculty have requested that classes move online due to the surge in COVID cases. 

Classes started this week at MUW, Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Mississippi State University, and Mississippi Valley State University. 

At the end of the meeting, the eight university presidents presented updates to the board. Mention of the COVID-19 pandemic was limited. ASU president Felicia Nave and MUW president Nora Miller briefly touched on the vaccine clinics that are being hosted on campus. 

“It feels close to normal,” Miller told the trustees. 

Jackson State University is rewarding students who show proof they’ve been vaccinated with a $1,000 housing credit, President Thomas Hudson said. MVSU President Jerryl Briggs and MSU President Mark Keenum presented the results of campus surveys. At MVSU, Briggs said 70% of students living on campus have reported being vaccinated. Keenum said that of the 17,000 students who completed MSU’s survey, 52% reported being vaccinated. 

“We don’t know if that’s fully vaccinated,” Keenum said, “but we do know they’ve had at least one shot.” 

DSU President William LaForge was the only one to present COVID case numbers to the board. 

“The climate so far with respect to COVID cases is good and healthy,” he told the board. “We only have one or two students and employees who have tested positive in the last couple of weeks.” 

Rodney Bennett, USM’s president, told the trustees he could not think of a time when students were more excited to return to campus. 

“I am proud of them for embracing health protocols,” he said. “They want to be in-person all year … and I want that for them too.” 

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce referenced the COVID-19 pandemic just one time during his 11-minute-long update. He told the trustees that he is working on getting the marching band fully vaccinated so they don’t miss any games this upcoming football season. 

Afterwards, Boyce sought to turn the mic over to his colleague, University of Mississippi Medical Center Vice Chancellor Dr. LouAnn Woodward. 

“I don’t know if Dr. Woodward is on, but if she is, I’d love her to make some comments about UMMC,” he said over Zoom. 

“I’m sorry, she is off handling our COVID response elsewhere on campus,” a representative from UMMC responded.

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Kayla Dowdle of Nesbit was looking forward to a rare beach getaway with friends. As the mother of four — including two-year-old twins — and a nurse, kid-free vacations were hard to come by.

But when her five-year-old started complaining of ear pain and showing signs of conjunctivitis, or pink eye, in the days before her trip, she had a feeling something was off. She took him to his pediatrician on July 20, and a nurse practitioner assessed him. He wasn’t coughing or feverish.

“The nurse practitioner came in and said it’s most likely something viral,” recalled Dowdle. “I asked if she would mind COVID testing him because I know conjunctivitis can be a symptom in children.”

The nurse practitioner pushed back and said she didn’t think a test was necessary. 

“She said ‘it would be highly unlikely’ if it were COVID. I said, ‘Just humor me and test him,’” said Dowdle.

Her son Maverick’s test came back positive, and the nurse practitioner was shocked. Dowdle said she told her Maverick was the clinic’s first positive test they had seen in a while. 

Within three days, all three of her other children were showing the same symptoms as her son. 

Pediatricians and infectious disease doctors in Mississippi have reached a conclusion: This is a different coronavirus than last year’s. 

And while they’re not sure whether the delta variant is more virulent, or causes more severe illness in children, they are sure of this: there is far, far more of it. A Mississippi Today analysis shows an 830% increase in the number COVID-19 cases in children for the first two weeks of school in 2021 compared to the first two weeks this data was reported last August.

As for Dowdle, she and her husband did their best to keep everyone masked and separated in different rooms of the house.  

“It was very hard to keep them separated. On day one (two-year-old) Sutton found a cup of Maverick’s and drank out of it,” she remembered. Dowdle and her husband both managed to stay well, but the virus jumped quickly from child to child.

“It moved through our entire household in a matter of days,” she said.

Thankfully each of her children recovered after about two days of symptoms, but Dowdle was, and still is, on the lookout for another serious potential effect of the coronavirus: multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C. The condition, which can lead to hospitalization and even death, commonly occurs four to six weeks after COVID-19 infection in children. 

Children’s of Mississippi saw its largest number of children hospitalized with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 on Thursday, with 28 children requiring hospital care. Eight of those were in the intensive care unit. 

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted Thursday that cases among youth are "increasing rapidly." 

The hospital is “seeing the consequences” of the reluctance to require masks in schools and the overall low vaccination rate of adults, said Dr. Charlotte Hobbs, professor of pediatric infectious disease and microbiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

READ MORE: Which Mississippi school districts are requiring masks?

“Right now we have intense community transmission of (COVID-19) with a large proportion of the vaccine-eligible population remaining unvaccinated,” she said.

A recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows children are making up an increasingly large share of the country’s total infections. Over 121,000 cases — what the group calls a “continuing substantial increase” — were added during the week ending Aug. 12, an over 400% jump from this time last month. Infections in children made up 18% of all COVID-19 cases reported during that same time frame.  

While the organization said it appears at this time severe illness due to coronavirus in children is uncommon, there is “an urgent need” to collect more data on long-term impacts of the pandemic in children — including their physical health. 

Hobbs said many children who are hospitalized with COVID at Children’s of Mississippi have underlying conditions such as obesity and diabetes, but they are also seeing previously healthy children in the hospital. The mother of a 13-year-old girl from Raleigh who died shortly after being diagnosed with COVID-19 told WLOX her daughter was a healthy child with no underlying conditions. 

And not only are more children getting sick with the hyper transmissible delta variant, there are fewer treatment options for them than for adults, Hobbs said.

Lacey Outlaw of Madison said she feels grateful and lucky her five-year-old had a mild case of coronavirus when she tested positive July 23. She had been complaining of a sore throat and had a fever the night before. 

Outlaw and her husband are both vaccinated, and they didn’t get sick. 

“I thought I had a scratchy throat one day, but it may have been me just psyching myself out. I was trying not to freak out, waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said. 

Because a vaccine for the 5 to 12-year-old age range has not yet been approved, the best thing Mississippians can do to protect children is to get vaccinated themselves, said Dr. Anita Henderson, a Hattiesburg pediatrician and the president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians.

“The more adults, the more teenagers that are vaccinated, the less likely someone is going to bring COVID back home to the child,” said Henderson. 

The post COVID-19 cases in children rapidly increasing in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackie Turner, the executive director of Mississippi’s Department of Employment Security, will be retiring from her position next month — the latest of numerous top staffers or appointees of Gov. Tate Reeves to leave state government in recent months.

Turner, who oversees the state agency that doles out unemployment benefits, announced her departure in an email to staff on Tuesday afternoon. She has been working with the employment security office for more than two decades and has spent the last 34 years as a state employee.

“With that in mind, it’s time for me to retire and spend more time with family and the care of my elderly parents,” Turner said in the email, which was obtained by Mississippi Today. “This is a very special, bitter-sweet occasion for me.”

In the email, she called her tenure as executive director “the honor of a lifetime.” Turner’s last day, according to the email, will be Sept. 30. MDES did not respond to a request for comment.

Former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Turner to the position in 2019, and she was re-appointed by current Gov. Tate Reeves in early 2020. She had previously served as the department’s deputy executive director.

Turner is the second agency head appointed by Reeves who announced they will leave a major state government post in two weeks. Last week, Reeves announced Mississippi Development Authority Director John Rounsaville will resign on Aug. 31.

Mississippi Today later reported that Rounsaville’s resignation came after an investigation into whether he sexually harassed three subordinate MDA employees. After that reporting, Reeves announced Rounsaville would be on administrative leave through his last day.

In recent weeks, Reeves has been hemorrhaging staff. Since Mississippi Today reported in late June that Reeves has lost four senior staffers and several policy staff since he took office in 2020, four additional staffers have left his office.

READ MORE: Other governors use bully pulpits, incentives to urge vaccination. Where’s Gov. Reeves?

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Katrina Kinder assumed she would one day need to leave Mississippi to get ahead in her career in the film industry. 

But the 24-year-old camera assistant from Jackson is starting to think she can have it all: the career she loves in the state she loves.

Kinder, a Jackson native going on four years in the film industry, has never had another year in which so many of her gigs were booked in her own backyard. She’s recently had to turn down local jobs because she’s already busy with something else filming in the state. 

“I’ve been going non-stop since the summer of last year,” she said. 

That’s been true for most of Mississippi’s film and production workers, a small but growing workforce. Mississippi film workers are used to a career that calls for regular trips out of state, but times are changing thanks to a recent renaissance in Mississippi movie and TV productions.

There have never been more TV, film and commercial productions traveling to shoot in Mississippi than over the last year. In 2020, nine feature films were shot in Mississippi. By the end of 2021, 12 will have been shot in the state — and that’s not counting at least a dozen more shoots and TV productions scheduled through December. 

“I talked to people who assume COVID slowed everything down for us,” said Nina Parikh, the director of the Mississippi Film Office. “Actually, it sped it up more.” 

Major film director Tate Taylor put Mississippi on the production map with “The Help” in 2011, but then by continuing to bring his work to his home state. The Mississippi Film Office has a $20 million budget for its rebate program that gives back money to productions based on how much they spend in-state. The office used its entire rebate program budget during the fiscal year that ended in June.

It’s the first time that’s happened. 

Parikh said much of the film industry relies on word of mouth, and that has been especially true for Mississippi during the latest uptick.

Last summer, a film starring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish — “The Card Counter” — returned to wrap up shooting at the Gulf Coast’s casinos. Mississippi was among the first, if not the first, state to reopen to filming after productions halted nationwide due to the pandemic. 

Mississippi’s early reopening got producers’ attention. Filmmakers soon discovered other perks to filming in the state — chief among them, its affordability. 

Things started literally booming from there: Bruce Willis did action scenes with actual explosions outside the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Jackson in April. There has been a range in scale from big-name productions like ABC’s “Women of the Movement” which premieres in Jan. 2022; to segments for the History Channel, including one hosted by Morgan Freeman; and locally produced feature films. 

Parikh said out-of-town productions will typically come in with about a dozen of their own crew members. Ideally, they’d hire upwards of 50 local workers. But with the sudden hike in productions, finding enough Mississippi crew members can be a challenge. 

“Right now, I have every production coming to us asking for previous crew lists,” Parikh said. “And they’ve exhausted those lists now and can’t find anyone because we have six or seven productions on top of each other.” 

Out-of-state productions want to hire local film workers in part because doing so adds to the rebate money they can get back from the state rebate program.  

Clark Richey, of Baldwyn, was a recent field producer for a History Channel reenactment in the Delta. The crew had to call in someone from a nearby state for one of the shooting days because none of the usual Mississippi crew members he works with were available.

“That was kind of eye-opening,” said Michael Williams, who worked on the shoot with Richey. “We’re running out of people, but it’s also a good problem to have.” 

Richey and Williams also worked together earlier this year on feature film “Mysterious Circumstance: The Death of Meriwether Lewis.” 

Richey, 56, wrote and produced the film with his company Six Shooter Studios. Richey — well aware of his bias as a native — never considered filming somewhere other than Mississippi. 

“I wanted Mississippi to reap the benefits of the film,” Richey said. “But the second part of that is that…you can make a movie here and not spend a lot of money.” 

From food and props to rental fees and costuming, costs are lower here. There is also good old fashioned southern hospitality. A property owner let Richey film on his land for free — the cost to access that area in other markets could have easily been $25,000, he said. 

Richey’s film budget was about $300,000, and the bulk of that money went back into Mississippi. His crew took up every room in a Belmont hotel and spilled over into nearby Airbnb rentals. That same budget film wouldn’t make the same economic impact in a big city.

“But it was significant for a small town of 67,000,” Richey said. 

Other parts of the state have seen the same sort of benefits, even before the last year. The town of Laurel is still the star of HGTV’s home makeover show “Home Town.” The TV show not only helped Laurel revitalize its downtown but also turned the town into a bit of a tourist hub. 

Taylor, the famed director, has had much of the same sort of impact in Natchez, where he has not only filmed but started a nonprofit that helps pair locals with professionals in industry. The nonprofit, Film Natchez, hosted a recent training workshop with more than 70 attendees.

Vincenzo Mistretta, who teaches film at University of Southern Mississippi, had five students work on local productions during the spring semester. 

“If productions are looking for people to work and work hard, they’re going to find them here in Mississippi,” Mistretta said. “They’re eager to work on sets and have an eagerness to find something bigger.”

Randy Kwon, who teaches film tech at Hinds Community College, said Mississippians have long struggled with staying in the film industry because there usually are not continuous productions. But he has seen how the film incentive program, which went unfunded for a couple years, is hitting its stride and bringing steadier work to the state. 

“To foster local production, I think we really need Hollywood-style production here,” Kwon said. 

Studio space would help guarantee steady work and continued growth in the local industry, according to Kwon. 

For now, it seems Mississippi has found its sweet spot. It’s not like the state could convince a massive Marvel movie to come here — the incentive program not only isn’t enough to lure them here, but the production crew base isn’t large enough to sustain such a big production. 

“We don’t have the infrastructure yet to support something like that,” said Parikh, “but we’re strong and we’re growing and we have a partner in the state to grow.” 

The influx in film work hasn’t been just a blessing for Kinder, but her family. She helped her husband learn skills to be a rigging and electric technician on set. He had a background in biology. Now, he has film work booked through the end of the year. 

Kinder most recently worked on a five-week shoot in Jackson for a movie called “The Inspection” with A24, one of her favorite film and TV companies. It was a bit of a dream job. 

And she didn’t have to go to New York to do it. 

The post Lights, cameras… Jackson? Mississippi’s production boom fosters a budding film workforce appeared first on Mississippi Today.

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced in a release Thursday morning.

Wicker sought a test after experiencing mild symptoms, his spokesman Phillip Waller said in a statement.

“Senator Wicker is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, is in good health, and is being treated by his Tupelo-based physician,” Waller said. “He is isolating, and everyone with whom Senator Wicker has come in close contact with recently has been notified.”

Wicker, the 70-year-old Republican, has served Mississippi in the Senate since 2007. He previously served in the U.S. House.

Wicker has encouraged Mississippians to get vaccinated for COVID-19, and called vaccinations “a miracle shot.”

“Each new shot in the arm will help our state and the nation finally put this pandemic behind us,” Wicker said in March.

Wicker is the second breakthrough case reported in the Senate, with vaccinated Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina testing positive earlier this month.

The post Sen. Roger Wicker tests positive for COVID-19, has mild symptoms appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Schools are now allowed to implement hybrid schedules — or a combination of virtual learning and in-person school days — after the State Board of Education approved a temporary policy revision on Thursday.

The board voted unanimously to allow school districts to utilize this schedule until Oct. 31 of this year. The Mississippi Department of Education cited the increased number of COVID-19 cases among school-aged children as the reason for bringing the policy to the board.

Hybrid schedules differ from one district to another but generally involve half of a school’s student body learning virtually and the other half in-person for part of the week. The two groups then swap, with the former virtual learners coming into the school while the former in-person students learn virtually.

The goal is to minimize the number of children students on a school campus at one time and to reduce transmission of the virus. Last week 20,334 students were in quarantine across 803 schools, according to state Department of Health data. More than 7,400 students, teachers and staff tested positive for the virus.

“We did confer with the Mississippi Department of Health (on this). We were hearing from superintendents who were expressing concern about the inability to provide adequate social distancing space in the schools,” said Carey Wright, state superintendent of education. “The Department of Health seems to think this is about an 8-week window, so we thought this would provide some relief to districts that are having trouble with that.”

The news comes as Children’s of Mississippi announced its highest-ever number of pediatric patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 on Thursday. Over the weekend, an eighth grader in Smith County School District died several days after being diagnosed with the virus.

The policy may be extended beyond Oct. 31 depending upon the status of the pandemic.

Board member Ronnie McGehee asked about the possibility of making the policy retroactive to the beginning of the school year, but that was not considered.

“The penetration of this virus knows no boundaries. And it doesn’t matter if you’re small sized district, or medium or large … To continue instruction, educators need the flexibility to protect their communities,” he said.

Last year, schools had the option of using an all virtual, hybrid or traditional in-person model.

This school year, the board on July 15 required schools to offer in-person learning as the primary mode of teaching for the 2021-22 school year. Local school boards may develop specific policies regarding virtual options for students who have medical conditions and district-wide virtual instruction in the event of a coronavirus outbreak, weather event, or some other emergency.

Chief Accountability Officer Paula Vanderford said at the time the department brought the policy to the board, “we did not anticipate the rapid rise in COVID cases so early in the school year.” The board last met on July 15, four days before the state saw its first big spike in daily cases of COVID-19.

But when the board met, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs was already publicly expressing his concern about a “surge of cases in kids” as a result of the spread of the delta variant. The state had also that week seen its highest single-day caseload to date since March.

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Black and Hispanic Mississippians pay a larger percentage of income in state and local taxes than higher earning white Mississippians, a new study says.

“Black households pay an average of 8.7% of their income in state and local tax while Hispanic families pay 9.1%,” according to a recently released study by non-profit One Voice, based on data compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “Those rates are significantly above the statewide average tax rate of 8.4% and the average rate paid by white households of 8.2%.”

The studies have been conducted at least in part because legislative leaders are considering significant changes to the state’s tax laws. Gov. Tate Reeves wants to phase out the state’s income tax, which accounts for about one-third of the state’s general fund revenue stream, without offering any additional tax increases to offset the lost funds. House Speaker Philip Gunn is proposing a massive tax swap that includes increasing the state’s sales tax while phasing out the income tax.

A joint House and Senate committee formed by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Gunn is preparing to have hearings on the state’s tax structure.

The recently released study, as well as one earlier this year, compiled by One Voice and the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy argue both Reeves’ and Gunn’s plans would further escalate the tax burden on Mississippi’s low income families while giving the wealthy a tax break.

According to the most recent study, the bottom 80% of Mississippians — earning less than $77,500 annually — pay a greater percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do those in the top 20%.

Kyra Roby, a policy analyst for One Voice, said, the top 20% of taxpayers “are paying proportionately less than they should be, which is why the bottom 80% has to pick up the slack and pay more than what would be proportionately fair. This amounts to a 1.1% income boost for the top 20% and a 1.6% income penalty for the bottom 80%. In other words, in order for the top 20%’s share of income to be equal to the share of taxes paid, they’d need to pay 1.1% more of their income on taxes. In order for the bottom 80%’s share of income to be equal to the share of taxes paid, they’d need to pay 1.6% less of their income on taxes.”

The first One Voice study released in March found a person in the top 1% with average income of $924,000 would pay $28,610 less per year in combined state taxes under Gunn’s proposal, while the next 4% of state income earners would save about $3,760 in taxes on average. Based on the analysis conducted by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, those earning $49,100 or above would pay less in taxes under the Gunn plan, while individuals earning less than that would pay more in state taxes than they currently are paying.

Both studies found that under the state’s current tax structure the income tax is the only mechanism that places more of a tax burden on the wealthiest than on low income Mississippians.

READ MORE: Lawmakers set hearings on Mississippi income tax elimination or cuts

The sales and excise tax exacerbates the inequity, according to the study. The study found that Mississippi’s Black households pay on average 30% on average above the level paid by white households in sale and excise taxes while Hispanic households pay 27% above average.

The reason for the discrepancy is that the sales and excise taxes place a greater burden on the poor and Black and Hispanic households in Mississippi are more likely than white households to fall into low income categories.

While Gunn and Reeves want to eliminate the income tax, One Voice advocates:

• A more graduated personal income tax structure that would result in the wealthy paying more.
• The elimination of the personal income tax exemption for the wealthy.
• The reduction of the state’s dependence on the sales tax.
• An estate tax levied on the wealthy. Mississippi is among the 38 states without an estate tax, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

One Voice advocates for Mississippi’s poor and working families. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is a progressive think tank that provides analysis of federal, state and local taxes.

READ MORE: Speaker Philip Gunn struggles to garner support for income tax-sales tax swap

The post Study: Mississippi tax laws place higher burden on people of color appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Clinton football coach and friend of the show Judd Boswell stops by to share his insights into the 2021 high school season and what it’s like to head into another uncertain season.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: An afternoon with Judd Boswell appeared first on Mississippi Today.

To help hospitals wade through the current staffing crisis amid a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections that is stripping the state’s healthcare system down for parts, the Mississippi Department of Health issued an order on Wednesday that permits certified paramedics, as well as regular and advanced emergency medical technicians to care for patients in any part of a Mississippi hospital. 

“This has been a pandemic of resource squeezes,” State Health Officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said. “We are fighting amongst ourselves for resources. Outside the state, companies are paying a lot to lure staff away. So it is a challenge, but a lot of people are staying here.”

The lack of staffed hospital beds in Mississippi has left patients waiting days for a hospital bed. As of Thursday morning, there were only six open intensive care unit (ICU) beds open across the state, with 46 patients waiting for an ICU bed. Additionally, 251 Mississippians were waiting for an emergency room (ER) bed. 

“We are clearly at the worst part of the pandemic that we’ve seen throughout, and it’s continuing to worsen,” Dobbs said. 

Mississippi has around 2,000 fewer nurses working than it did a year ago, and every hospital in the state is feeling that strain. The University of Mississippi Medical Center has constructed two field hospitals in parking garages to help with patient overflow and provide monoclonal antibody treatments to keep infected people from being hospitalized. 

This fourth wave of COVID-19 infections continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Between July 20 and Aug. 16, 98% of cases (56,748), 89% of hospitalizations (302) and 86% of deaths (303) were among unvaccinated people. 

The threat of the delta variant has motivated more Mississippians to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Last week, more than 71,000 Mississippians took the shot, the highest number seen since the end of April. Dobbs said that the increased vaccination rate will pay dividends down the road and help depress the level of transmission that’s occurring rapidly across the state. 

“This is going to pay huge dividends in a few weeks, but it’s not going to make a difference this week, or even next week,” Dobbs said. “This is something that’s going to help us in the fall, in September. But still, this is a critical first step to making sure that we’re protecting these folks.”

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