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 Sunday, November 22:
New cases: 779| New Deaths: 19
Total Hospitalizations: 999
Total cases: 143,180| Total Deaths: 3,676
Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. On Nov. 16, Reeves added seven counties to the state’s mask-wearing mandate. The 22 counties under a mandate until Dec. 11 are: Benton, Carroll, Covington, DeSoto, Forrest, Harrison, Hinds, Humphreys, Itawamba, Jackson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Leflore, Lee, Madison, Marshall, Montgomery, Pontotoc, Rankin, Tate, Winston, and Yalobusha. State health officials still encourage widespread masking and credit the mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.
The seven-day new case average reached 1,143 today, a 54% increase since the start of November and the highest mark since Aug. 3.
The health department has reported over 8,000 new cases in the last week; apart from the record surge in July and August — which saw a 13-day stretch with over 8,000 new weekly cases — this is the only other time Mississippi has reached that threshold.
The number of hospitalizations have also begun to surge in the last month; using the seven-day rolling averages, total hospitalizations have increased by 32% in that time, ICU patients by 34%, and patients on ventilators by 36%.
Overall, the state’s ICUs are 84% full, with COVID-19 patients comprising 26% of all ICU beds. Sixteen of the state’s highest level COVID-care centers are at 86% capacity, and five of them — both Baptist Memorial Hospitals in Southaven and in the Golden Triangle, University of Mississippi Medical Center and St. Dominic in Jackson, and the Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville — have zero ICU beds available.
According to the latest White House task force report, Mississippi’s test positivity rate is now 14%.
Within the last two weeks, Mississippi has moved from “orange” to “red” on the Global Health Institute’s risk level tracker, meaning it now averages over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Despite the rise in cases in the state, Mississippi now ranks 31st in new cases per capita, dropping from 26th a week ago.
Counties across the state saw large increases in cases over the last week. Choctaw County (15% increase), Stone County (12%), Lincoln County (12%), Attala County (12%) and Marshall County (12%) saw the biggest surges in that span.
MSDH reports that 116,683 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
House Speaker Philip Gunn, left, and Gov. Tate Reeves listen as Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann speaks during a press conference on May 7, 2020.
What looked to be a ho-hum 2021 legislative session as a respite from the 2020 session — the longest in state history and dominated by COVID-19 — got more interesting this past week when Gov. Tate Reeves released his budget proposal.
The Republican Reeves proposed phasing out the state’s income tax, which accounts for more than 30% of state general fund revenue, or about $1.90 billion annually.
Reeves, in his first year as governor, spent most of the 2020 session being bullied by legislative leaders and reacting to their actions, such as their historic move — originally opposed by the governor — to replace the 126-year-old state flag that incorporated the Confederate battle emblem in its design.
The governor, in his budget plan, made it clear that he intends to be the hammer and not the nail in the 2021 session. And from a strategic standpoint, he might have selected a good issue on which to base that effort. After all, there is nothing from a policy standpoint a Republican politician likes better than a tax cut, and especially an income tax cut. And Republicans maintain the three-fifths majority needed in each chamber to pass a tax cut if they all stick together.
While the ongoing pandemic casts doubt on the economic outlook for the state and on the amount of revenue that will be generated to pay for vital services, Reeves argues that now is precisely the right time to enact a major tax cut.
“We as a state need to think big…” Reeves said. “What can we do to make a splash? What can we do to say to the world not only do we want you to invest capital here, we want you to move here.”
Eliminating the income tax would spur that growth, Reeves said.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, has long been a proponent of cutting the income tax. A matter of fact, during the previous term, then-Lt. Gov. Reeves, as the presiding officer of the Senate, blocked efforts of the House leaders to phase out the income tax.
Gunn has advocated for the state relying on use and excise taxes to fund state government. Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, relies on both a 7% sales tax on retail items and a relatively modest income tax to generate the bulk of the revenue to fund state government.
During the 2019 gubernatorial campaign, then Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood, who lost to Reeves, proposed reducing the 7% sales tax on groceries, which is the highest state-imposed tax of its kind in the nation and disproportionately falls on the poor to pay.
Many Democrats and some Republicans in the state have for years tried to at least reduce the tax on food.
According to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, Mississippi had the nation’s 24th most regressive tax structure in 2018. Regressive taxes place more of the burden on the poor. If the income tax, a progressive tax that generally requires the wealthy to pay more, is eliminated, that could result in a larger tax burden for the poor. Reeves maintains the income tax could be phased out without needing to increase other taxes to make up for the loss in revenue. The income tax cut would result in growth of other revenue sources, he reasons.
Others argue that the needs are too many to be reducing taxes. Kindergarten through 12th grade education is underfunded more than $250 million for the current year, and most acknowledge that it will be shorted by at least that much in the coming fiscal year. Community colleges and universities also have been underfunded, and the state faces multiple challenges in providing health care to the needy.
During the 2019 campaign, both Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said providing a multi-year pay raise to get teachers to at least near the Southeastern average was a major priority — perhaps their top priority.
A pay raise that was planned for the 2020 session was scrapped because of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Reeves did not make a teacher pay raise part of his legislative priority released last week, though a spokesperson later said the governor believed there would be money for a pay raise even while cutting taxes.
But he notably said when presenting his budget that teachers tell him all the time, “I didn’t get into teaching for the money. I didn’t go into teaching for any other reason than I wanted to make my community a better place.”
Still, Reeves might have a difficult time convincing legislators during the 2021 session, which begins in January, to impose a massive tax cut if they cannot muster the money for a teacher pay raise.
Under that scenario, he could again become the nail.
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, November 21:
New cases: 1,972| New Deaths: 15
Total Hospitalizations:965
Total cases: 142,401| Total Deaths: 3,657
Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. On Nov. 16, Reeves added seven counties to the state’s mask-wearing mandate. The 22 counties under a mandate until Dec. 11 are: Benton, Carroll, Covington, DeSoto, Forrest, Harrison, Hinds, Humphreys, Itawamba, Jackson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Leflore, Lee, Madison, Marshall, Montgomery, Pontotoc, Rankin, Tate, Winston, and Yalobusha. State health officials still encourage widespread masking and credit the mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.
The seven-day new case average reached 1,143 today, a 54% increase since the start of November and the highest mark since Aug. 3.
The health department has reported over 8,000 new cases in the last week; apart from the record surge in July and August — which saw a 13-day stretch with over 8,000 new weekly cases — this is the only other time Mississippi has reached that threshold.
The number of hospitalizations have also begun to surge in the last month; using the seven-day rolling averages, total hospitalizations have increased by 32% in that time, ICU patients by 34%, and patients on ventilators by 36%.
Overall, the state’s ICUs are 84% full, with COVID-19 patients comprising 26% of all ICU beds. Sixteen of the state’s highest level COVID-care centers are at 86% capacity, and five of them — both Baptist Memorial Hospitals in Southaven and in the Golden Triangle, University of Mississippi Medical Center and St. Dominic in Jackson, and the Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville — have zero ICU beds available.
According to the latest White House task force report, Mississippi’s test positivity rate is now 14%.
Within the last two weeks, Mississippi has moved from “orange” to “red” on the Global Health Institute’s risk level tracker, meaning it now averages over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Despite the rise in cases in the state, Mississippi now ranks 31st in new cases per capita, dropping from 26th a week ago.
Counties across the state saw large increases in cases over the last week. Choctaw County (15% increase), Stone County (12%), Lincoln County (12%), Attala County (12%) and Marshall County (12%) saw the biggest surges in that span.
MSDH reports that 116,683 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
Faye Peterson, the Hinds County circuit court judge overseeing Nancy New’s case, issued a gag order in the DHS case. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Editor’s note: This story is the result of a collaboration between the Clarion Ledger and Mississippi Today. Anna Wolfe reported for Mississippi Today and Giacomo Bologna reported for the Clarion Ledger.
After admonishing a defendant this week for speaking to reporters, a Hinds County judge put a gag order on all parties involved in a case stemming from Mississippi’s welfare embezzlement scandal.
In connection with what officials are calling a “sprawling conspiracy,” a grand jury indicted six people in February for allegedly stealing or conspiring to misspend millions of federal dollars meant for poor Mississippians.
The judge’s order means the public must likely wait until criminal trials are held to learn more about the scandal, and that could take several months — if not longer.
All six defendants have pleaded not guilty and are currently expected to stand trial in 2021, the key cases planned for February and April, though additional delays are possible. Until this month, none of them had spoken publicly about the investigation.
In an exclusive interview with Mississippi Today and the Clarion Ledger, a key defendant in the case Nancy New declined to answer many questions, but refuted the narrative offered by investigators.
Nancy New
Officials say Nancy New and her son Zach New embezzled $4.15 million in federal welfare dollars that flowed from the Mississippi Department of Human Services through a nonprofit founded by Nancy New called the Mississippi Community Education Center. According to prosecutors, the News funneled about half of that money to a politically connected Florida-based biomedical startup.
But when asked if she had been directed to make payments to the founder of the concussion drug company, Nancy New responded “absolutely.” Mississippi Today and the Clarion Ledger published Nancy New’s comments in a Nov. 14 story.
Faye Peterson, the Hinds County circuit court judge overseeing Nancy New’s case, apparently read the story.
Two days after the story’s publication, Peterson issued an order referencing the article. It prohibited any parties, representatives or witnesses from speaking to the media to ensure Nancy New receives an impartial trial.
It’s common for judges to issue these kinds of orders in highly publicized cases.
“There’s two things to be balanced, the public’s right to know and the right to a fair trial,” said longtime north Mississippi defense attorney Jim Waide.
In May, three months after the arrests, State Auditor Shad White released his annual state audit. In 104 pages, the auditor detailed $94 million in questionable spending by the Mississippi Department of Human Services under former director John Davis and the agency’s subgrantees, including Nancy New’s Mississippi Community Education Center.
Once former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Davis in 2016, the welfare director began overseeing a $86.5 million annual welfare block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which comes with exceptionally lax spending requirements.
“He (Davis) saw it as an opportunity to build a kingdom over there,” White said to the media after releasing his report. “If there was a way to misspend money, it seems DHS leadership or their grantees thought of it and tried it.”
Waide echoes those defending the alleged perpetrators of the scheme, saying he believes officials have tried the defendants, particularly Davis, in the media since the February arrests.
“I think that those statements that the state auditor made are highly prejudicial,” Waide said. “He’s already indicated throughout the media that (Davis) is guilty.”
“I think the auditor severely hampered (Davis’) right to a fair trial,” he added. “I think the obvious effect of it was to create possible bias of the jury.”
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Superintendent Dr. Errick L. Greene speaks during a public meeting about the findings of the student based study on the school district during a public meeting at the Jackson Convention Complex Thursday, November 29, 2018.
Jackson Public School District announced it will resume in-person learning in January of next year after operating entirely virtually during the fall semester.
High school basketball and soccer programs will resume in December, and middle school sports will begin again in January.
School will resume virtually on Jan. 5, but students will have the option to return on Jan. 19 after a “self-quarantine period” following the holidays, according to a document emailed to employees on Friday.
Elementary schoolers will be able to return to school five days a week, and middle and high schoolers will have the option to attend a hybrid program. Proper social distancing and “enhanced cleaning” will be put in place, the document stated.
Superintendent Errick Greene cited several reasons for the decision, including the social and emotional needs of students.
Those needs “are great, and it’s very difficult to offer support for those needs virtually,” he stated in a letter to parents and employees.
He also cited recent news surrounding a COVID-19 vaccine, and said the district has learned from other schools who have run in-person school during the pandemic.
All plans will be subject to change, the district noted, and the proposed transition must be approved by the school board at its meeting on Dec. 1.
Neshoba County School District students get board school buses after the district’s first day of school on Aug. 5, 2020.
Schools and districts across Mississippi are shutting their doors and transitioning to online learning ahead of the Thanksgiving break as COVID-19 cases sharply spike.
Schools reported record-high COVID-19 infections among students and teachers for the week of Nov. 9, and some educators are concerned that social gatherings over the Thanksgiving holiday could prolong the virtual learning period.
Over the five-day period, 1,546 students and teachers across the state tested positive for COVID-19, according to data submitted by schools to the Mississippi Department of Health. The highest number of cases in one week to that point was 899.
That brings the total number of positive COVID-19 cases in students, teachers and staff to 7,930 since the start of school.
Yazoo County School District transitioned to virtual learning after several schools had multiple cases. Despite the relatively low number of cases district-wide, Superintendent Ken Barron said, a large number of teachers and staff were quarantined, making it impossible to continue in-person learning.
“Two of our schools had about half of their staff listed as close contacts (to positive cases),” said Barron.
The plan is to resume a normal schedule the Monday after Thanksgiving. The district has been operating virtually on Mondays and returning to in-person instruction the remaining four days of the week. At that point, all students and staff at all the schools will have not met in person for more than 20 days, said Barron.
“It should give us a good reset point. But with Thanksgiving, if we start seeing cases and exposures, we may get back to virtual very quick,” said Barron.
Germantown High School and the 7th grade at Madison Middle School in Madison County also transitioned to virtual.
Superintendent Charlotte Seals said the decision was made by following state health guidelines, particularly the guideline that states if three or more individual classes, groups or buildings are experiencing simultaneous outbreaks, transitioning to virtual should be considered.
She said most of the cases were traced back to off-campus activities, and the school district has been preparing for this since the summer using virtual learning practice days.
“Our first practice virtual learning day was in October. All of our schools did that … so for Germantown High, that really helped when they went to distance learning,” she said. “They already knew how it worked, students know how to log in from home, teachers know how to interface through the platform and parents know how to assist.”
Seals said the decision to only transition the 7th grade at Madison Middle School was made because the grades have separate wings in that building and don’t often mingle.
“We have to be flexible and able to pivot. We’re going to do everything we can on a school by school or grade by grade basis because we want to get every day of face-to-face instruction we can get,” she said.
During the week of Oct. 26 through Oct. 30, the Western Line School District reported between 1 and 5 positive cases among students and teachers. A little more than 50 students and staff were placed in quarantine, according to state department of health data. So in early November, the district took “precautionary measures” and shut down all school buildings for a week, said superintendent Lawrence Hudson.
Hudson said the district received a number of close contact reports from teachers.
“You don’t know if they got the virus or not, or (are) spreading it to others,” Hudson said. “So the safest thing for us to do — because we had so many uncertainties of staff or students who may or may not have had it — we shut it down because it gave us time to find out more information for anybody else who had close contact.”
Western Line students returned back to school on a hybrid model on Nov. 9. Now, one week later, the district announced closing Riverside High School due to the principal testing positive. Riverside High is currently the only school conducting virtual-only learning.
Hudson said his administration is doing the best they can to be as transparent as possible with teachers, staff and the community about what’s happening in their schools. Although they don’t notify “everyone every time there’s a positive case,” they directly notify individuals who were in close contact and need to quarantine or those who were in the area of a positive case.
“If you don’t receive a notification in Western Line, you were not in danger. Until the pandemic is under control, these are the circumstances we’re faced with,” he said.
Below are the schools and school districts that have recently transitioned to temporary distance learning. If you know of additional schools to add to the list, please email reporters Kate Royals at kroyals@mississippitoday.org or Aallyah Wright at aallyah@mississippitoday.org.
Well into the pandemic, Jackie Courson’s doctor wanted to set up a telehealth appointment. Courson was skeptical. He’s on a costly satellite internet plan with a company headquartered in Maryland whose service he can’t exactly rely on.
“Look, we’ll try,” Courson said to his doctor. Then as he predicted, a video conference just wasn’t possible.
“It just wouldn’t connect. It’d spin and it’d buffer and whatnot, so we just ended up talking (over the phone). I didn’t get seen but I got heard,” Courson said.
Courson, who lives just outside of the city of Pontotoc, gets his electricity through Pontotoc Electric Power Association (PEPA). PEPA is an electrical cooperative serving Pontotoc and Calhoun counties that was formed like many others in the 1930s to bring electricity to the most rural areas of the country.
Cooperatives are mutually owned by everyone who is a member. Members elect board members to elect their interests, like providing broadband, while taking into account traditional business calculations like profit margin. In contrast, private providers like Entergy or AT&T are privately owned companies that make decisions solely based off traditional business calculations.
He and many others in his community assumed that after the Legislature allowed cooperatives to start providing broadband in 2019, PEPA would start laying the groundwork to do that, like other surrounding cooperatives did.
As the year went on, though, “members began to see that our board was not real enthusiastic about getting in the broadband business because they had been debt free for many years. There’s nothing wrong with fiscal responsibility, but all of a sudden we woke up and saw that all of these EPAs around us had already voted to do it,” Courson said.
Until the pandemic hit, members began packing out PEPA board meetings, with over 600 people in attendance, Courson said. They started a Facebook group advocating for broadband that now has almost 3,000 members.
But still, PEPA did not opt to start providing broadband, citing that it was not economically feasible to do so. The co-op also didn’t apply for state or federal grants available through Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds that would have helped pay for the creation of a broadband operation there, said Brandon Presley, Public Service Commissioner for the Northern District of Mississippi.
“Frustrated and highly disappointed would be a good way to describe it,” said Courson on the way his community feels about the cooperative’s broadband efforts, or lack thereof.
So now, when school, work, doctors visits and so many other aspects of life have moved online, roughly 40% of Pontotoc County and 20% of Calhoun County do not have access to high speed broadband internet, according to Broadband Now, a national database that tracks broadband access across the country.
That’s why Courson ran to be a PEPA board member — one of nine people who make decisions on behalf of everyone the co-op serves. On Thursday, Courson beat his opponent and will assume office Jan. 1.
“What you’ve got going on in Pontotoc right now is a very contested election for the board of directors where candidates are running on defeating (incumbent) board members because of their opposition to bringing broadband. So the people are going to have their say one way or another,” Presley said in an interview with Mississippi Today earlier this year.
A message left requesting an interview with a PEPA representative was not returned to Mississippi Today.
Pontotoc and Calhoun counties are unique in that their cooperative isn’t working toward providing broadband. They’re in the same boat as thousands of other Mississippians — especially rural ones — who don’t have access to affordable, reliable broadband.
People often discuss the gaping digital divide, but what’s not talked about as much is the reasons why one exists at all. It’s a quieter, more convoluted story, albeit one with massive consequences.
In Mississippi, 81% of people have access to high speed broadband internet, meaning there is a broadband provider in their area from which they could technically purchase internet service. That doesn’t mean that 81% of Mississippians actually have a broadband subscription, it just means that 81% could, if they could afford it. According to Broadband Now, 57% of Mississippians have access to affordable broadband.
The state and federal definitions vary on what exactly broadband internet is, but it essentially boils down to how quickly something can be uploaded or downloaded.
To Presley, the reasons for the digital divide are complicated but hinge on a few core concepts.
“Policy in the state of Mississippi has not made broadband a priority prior to 2019. It’s just that simple. It was not a priority. It was viewed as cotton candy at the county fair. They might want, but they may not need,” Presley said.
Along with prior apathy among policy makers, Presley also points to private broadband providers who haven’t expanded their efforts to the most rural parts of Mississippi because they couldn’t earn a profit by doing that.
“What really is the culprit, in my opinion, has been the idea that the market will just simply handle the need for broadband. ‘We’ll leave it up to the market. The market will handle it.’ The market has failed — and it’s not even a close case — the market has failed rural Mississippi,” Presley said.
This meant that people living in rural areas were at the mercy of private providers to decide if it was profitable to provide broadband in that area, and it usually isn’t because not enough people live there who would pay for the service. If a company deemed it couldn’t make enough money by laying fiber in a rural area, then that area would continue to not have internet.
That was why Presley spearheaded the Broadband Enabling Act of 2019, which allowed electrical cooperatives to provide broadband to the most rural Mississippians. Before that law passed, the cooperatives were only allowed to provide electricity; it was not legal for them to provide broadband.
Private citizens have looked into paying themselves for broadband providers to lay cable near their house, but the upfront cost can be anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000, Presley said.
“Rural Mississippi has been told by internet providers that if they would just pay $30,000 for the polls and the lines, they’ll be glad to bring them $65 a month internet service. Well that’s ridiculous. Nobody is going to pay for that,” Presley said.
It was also the same problem rural America faced in the 1930s with electricity that led to the creation of electrical cooperatives.
“The Broadband Enabling Act of 2019 really was the door opener to fix the problem that persisted out there, because it’s absolutely no different than what it was in the ‘30s with electricity. Everyone needed it. No one could individually pay to get themselves service and we had to have a universal approach to service,” Presley said.
While the Broadband Enabling Act cleared the way for cooperatives to provide broadband internet, making that financially happen for some co-ops has, again, been complicated.
When it comes to providing broadband, the state’s electric cooperatives can generally be divided into two groups: “The ones that can economically get there, and the ones who are trying to figure it out,” said Executive Vice President and CEO of Electric Cooperatives of Mississippi Michael Callahan.
The cooperatives that have been able to make it work so far are generally smaller ones with denser populations, Callahan said. That means the cooperatives don’t have to pay as much to lay fiber per mile because there are fewer miles to cover and more people living per mile who are more likely to opt in and pay for the service.
The cooperatives that cover larger, less densely populated areas don’t have that benefit.
“For most of the studies that I’ve looked at personally, you’re looking at needing 12 to 16 customers taking your service per line mile (to break even). Across the state, our average meters per line mile is about 8.8. When you get up into the Mississippi Delta in some places it’s 2 to 4. I’ve got to be honest, it’s going to be tough to make this work in some of these places in Mississippi because the population isn’t there to sustain it,” Callahan said.
Callahan also said that some of these studies indicated that if there were only two households per line mile in a certain area who chose to opt in to broadband services they’d have to pay about $95 a month for the co-op to break even.
“One part of this Broadband Enabling Act is if we were to go into the business then we have to have a plan to provide broadband to every member of Twin County. So we have some areas that would mean running fiber several miles to offer it to one account and that account may not opt in,” said Tim Perkins, General Manager of Twin County Electric Power Association.
Aside from small parts of some neighboring counties, Twin County EPA mainly services Issaquena, Humphreys, Sharkey and Washington, which are some of the least connected counties in the state, though Twin County has recently started taking steps toward providing broadband.
Before COVID-19, the main ways that electrical cooperatives could cover the start up costs for entering the broadband business would be by taking out a loan, securing a grant, or using savings from the electrical business profits to invest in creating its broadband operations.
The law expressly forbade co-ops from raising residents’ electricity bills to help pay for broadband expansion in their districts.
For some co-ops, taking out a multimillion dollar loan to build out a fiber broadband network that people may or may not sign up for felt like too big of a risk, said Brent Bailey, Public Service Commissioner for the Central District of Mississippi.
In essence, the economic reasons that kept private providers from bringing broadband to rural Mississippi were the same reasons that cooperatives gave for deciding not to get into the broadband business.
But since the pandemic, millions of dollars in grant money have been made available by both state and federal agencies. Out of Mississippi’s 26 electric cooperatives, 15 received CARES money allocated through the state to expand their broadband operations. Mississippi Electric Cooperatives also stand to gain $940 million phased in over 10 years through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which is administered through the FCC.
Back in Pontotoc and Calhoun counties, three out of the nine PEPA board member seats were up for election. Two were contested and one was a race between two people who would be newcomers to the board. While Courson won his seat, an incumbent board member beat a challenger who was campaigning on broadband expansion. Robert Tedford won the other seat. He did not want to comment on whether he’ll advocate for broadband expansion when reached by Mississippi Today. This makes Courson the sole board member who is publicly pushing for broadband in his community. And at this point, PEPA has already lost out on millions of dollars it could have received in state and federal funding.
Still, Courson remains optimistic. He hopes that by joining the board he can at least try to persuade other board members to start providing broadband to the community.
At this point, Courson said, that’s just about the only option they have.
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, November 20:
New cases: 1,638| New Deaths: 23
Total Hospitalizations:926
Total cases: 140,429| Total Deaths: 3,642
Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. On Nov. 16, Reeves added seven counties to the state’s mask-wearing mandate. The 22 counties under a mandate until Dec. 11 are: Benton, Carroll, Covington, DeSoto, Forrest, Harrison, Hinds, Humphreys, Itawamba, Jackson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Leflore, Lee, Madison, Marshall, Montgomery, Pontotoc, Rankin, Tate, Winston, and Yalobusha. State health officials still encourage widespread masking and credit the mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.
The seven-day new case average reached 1,143 today, a 54% increase since the start of November and the highest mark since Aug. 3.
The health department has reported over 8,000 new cases in the last week; apart from the record surge in July and August — which saw a 13-day stretch with over 8,000 new weekly cases — this is the only other time Mississippi has reached that threshold.
The number of hospitalizations have also begun to surge in the last month; using the seven-day rolling averages, total hospitalizations have increased by 32% in that time, ICU patients by 34%, and patients on ventilators by 36%.
Overall, the state’s ICUs are 84% full, with COVID-19 patients comprising 26% of all ICU beds. Sixteen of the state’s highest level COVID-care centers are at 86% capacity, and five of them — both Baptist Memorial Hospitals in Southaven and in the Golden Triangle, University of Mississippi Medical Center and St. Dominic in Jackson, and the Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville — have zero ICU beds available.
According to the latest White House task force report, Mississippi’s test positivity rate is now 14%.
Within the last two weeks, Mississippi has moved from “orange” to “red” on the Global Health Institute’s risk level tracker, meaning it now averages over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Despite the rise in cases in the state, Mississippi now ranks 31st in new cases per capita, dropping from 26th a week ago.
Counties across the state saw large increases in cases over the last week. Choctaw County (15% increase), Stone County (12%), Lincoln County (12%), Attala County (12%) and Marshall County (12%) saw the biggest surges in that span.
MSDH reports that 116,683 people have recovered.
Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:
After months of uncertainty and plans delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Metrocenter Mall in Jackson will partially reopen later this month, officials told Mississippi Today.
The mall, long a pillar of economic development and entertainment in west Jackson, opened in 1978. At the time, the 1,250,000 square feet of mall space was the largest in the state, comprised of two levels of retail and office space with 60 stores and four anchor stores.
After several attempts to revitalize the mall, the property closed for good in 2018 as a major retail area. Only a handful of City of Jackson offices and a Burlington Coat Factory remained as occupants.
But in January 2020, Emily Seiferth-Sanders announced her initial plan to reopen the mall on April 1. By March, the pandemic was taking root in the state, effectively delaying plans to open the mall.
April 1 came and went without opening, and WJTV and other outlets reported many vendors complained they were never contacted by Seiferth-Sanders about opening plans after they paid their deposit for a spot. On Oct. 2, Seiferth-Sanders posted a video to the mall’s Facebook page addressed to tenants. She said she couldn’t give an opening date yet, but she gave directions for tenants to cancel their lease and get their deposit back if they wished.
This week Seiferth-Sanders told Mississippi Today she plans to conduct a “soft opening” of an upper-level section of the mall on Nov. 25. However, those plans are dependent upon passing inspection by City of Jackson Code Enforcement and the Fire Marshall.
“We’re here to build up the wasted place and bring life… restoration, to this area of west Jackson that has been on a decline for a while,” she said. “There will be 25% of retail stores, along with an entertainment area, schools, food vendors, a drive-in movie theater and mixed-use housing.”
“Currently, we have 40 tenants, a few of those being food vendors,” said Senior Vice President of Mall Operations William Grigsby. “It’s exciting. We want to support the community, help revitalize the area by creating jobs. And we want the community’s support too.”
