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:
Students wear face masks as they sit in a classroom on the first day of school at Neshoba County Central Middle School, Wednesday, August 5, 2020.
More than 23,000 fewer students are enrolled in Mississippi public schools this year than last year, and a spokesperson for the state Department of Education did not answer when asked where the students went.
Public school enrollment in Mississippi has steadily declined in recent years, but the most recent school year (2020-2021) shows 23,286 fewer students are enrolled in the public school system this year compared to 2019-2020 — a 5% decrease from last school year.
Kayleigh Skinner/Mississippi Today
State Superintendent Carey Wright
On Monday, State Superintendent Carey Wright said at an online event hosted by Mississippi State University’s Stennis Institute of Government and the Capitol Press Corps that the Mississippi Department of Education was looking into the matter.
Wright said the department is working to gather data about the number of students who have gone to different options, such as private school or home schooling. She plans to meet with attendance officials within the department later this week, she said.
“We are directing districts to have school attendance officers to track down any child who was in school last year and not in school this year to find out where they are,” Wright said. “My goal is to make sure they are in a learning environment. If parents decided to do home school, or private school, that is certainly their choice. What’s not the choice is to just not do anything.”
State law requires all children (ages 6-17) to be enrolled by a parent or legal guardian in public school or a “a state approved, nonpublic (private school), or educating the child at home in an organized educational program.” Additionally, 5-year-olds enrolled in kindergarten are also subject to the same rules outlined in the law.
When asked if the department knew where thousands of students went, a spokesperson directed Mississippi Today where to look at year to year comparisons in enrollment data.
“We know the pandemic has impacted schools across the country, including in Mississippi,” the MDE spokesperson said in an email. “That is why School Attendance Officers (SAO) are working with school districts to identify compulsory school-age children whose families have not re-enrolled them in local public schools and have not submitted a home school enrollment form to their local SAO.”
This school year is unprecedented in that the coronavirus pandemic has forced districts to revise how they deliver instruction. Though some still offer traditional in-person schooling, many are entirely virtual or use a hybrid model, making it difficult at times for some schools to keep track of where students are.
Jefferson Davis County High School was one of the schools that opted for virtual learning. But it has been challenging to teach and reach students due to internet and transportation issues, said Taylor Copeland, high school social studies and French teacher. Copeland, a first year teacher at Jefferson Davis, teaches 109 ninth graders in her history classes and 14 students in her French class.
Only 25 show up consistently for their Google Meet class sessions. The majority of her students have been issued packets and some students have not been reached at all, she said.
“A number of students we’ve reached out to with calls, home visits, and not doing the work at all … I understand some are very self motivated and parent motivated and some, they’re 14-years-old,” Copeland said in a Zoom interview. “I could be teaching all 109 of my students, but that’s not the reality.”
This year 442,627 students are enrolled in public schools. This figure represents average daily attendance as of Sept. 30, or the average number of enrolled students who attend school each day.
The largest drops in enrollment occurred in the younger grades, with pre-K and kindergarten each seeing more than 10 percent changes.
“The annual decline in student enrollment corresponds to a decline in the overall population of the state,” the department told Mississippi Today. “Mississippi and states throughout the country are seeing larger-than-expected drops in enrollment this year, particularly in the early grades beginning with pre-K.”
Will Hall, a “Mississippi boy,” has returned to his home state as the new head football coach at Southern Miss.
From all angles, Will Hall appears a perfect fit and a home run hire at Southern Miss.
Let’s start with his family and friends. Bobby Hall, his dad, is one of the most successful high school football coaches in Mississippi history. Marcus Boyles, his first babysitter, is another highly successful coach at nearby Petal. Drew Causey, the head coach at Class 6A powerhouse Oak Grove, is one of his best friends and college teammate.
That’s just for starters. There are plenty more.
Says Bobby Hall, “There’s not a high school coach in Mississippi that Will or I don’t know.”
Rick Cleveland
Says Boyles, who babysat Will Hall when Will was still in diapers at Raleigh, “I have followed him his entire life. He’s been around great coaches his entire life, including his dad. He’s been a head coach himself. He’s recruited Mississippi successfully everywhere he’s been. He’s built relationships with Mississippi coaches. He’s won everywhere he’s been.”
Get this: Three of Boyles’ former Petal players were recruited to Tulane by Will Hall, the Green Wave offensive coordinator the past two seasons. All three are starters. They were not recruited by Southern Miss. Those players helped Tulane beat Southern Miss 66-24 in Hattiesburg earlier this season. Hall’s offense ran for 427 yards with a starting freshman right tackle, Trey Tuggle, Hall recruited out of Mize.
When Hall was an assistant at Memphis, he recruited Yazoo County’s Kenny Gainwell, who probably was the best player in Mississippi as a senior and who had over 2,200 all-purpose yards last season for the Tigers.
When he was at West Alabama, Hall recruited and coached Malcolm Butler out of Vicksburg. Butler famously became a Super Bowl hero. Ty Keyes, a highly recruited quarterback out of Taylorsville, is a Tulane commit, again recruited by Will Hall.
There are many more of those Mississippi recruiting success stories, too, but you get the idea.
Says Causey, who has his Oak Grove Warriors in the Class 6A Championship game again this weekend, “Whether he was at West Alabama or West Georgia or Louisiana-Lafayette or Tulane, Will has always recruited Mississippi hard and he has always gotten good players. He has a lot of connections in Mississippi. And nobody will outwork him.”
Bobby Hall, again: “Will is a Mississippi boy through and through. He eats, sleeps and drinks football. He was with me at practices from when he was in kindergarten until when he played for me.”
There’s a story there. Will Hall was his dad’s quarterback, leading Amory to a Class 3A state championship. He could run it and he could throw it. But he was 5 feet, 9 inches short. No colleges recruited him. Itawamba, the JUCO that had the first pick of Amory players back then, didn’t want him, either. Bobby Hall sent a film to legendary Northwest Community College coach Bobby Ray Franklin asking him if he could use a quarterback. Franklin watched and said yes, he surely could.
At Northwest, Will Hall set records and was a two-time All American. Still, there were no D-I offers, so Will Hall went to North Alabama where he won the Harlon Hill Trophy, Division II’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.
Said Causey, who was a guard on that team, “Will was short for a quarterback, but he was very, very talented – and more than that, he was a great leader. The team believed in him. And he always praised his offensive line, so he had that going for him.”
North Alabama won 13 games and made the national semis his senior year.
Will Hall helped Tulane win 66-24 at Southern Miss in September.
Will Hall’s coaching career has been much the same: He started small and worked his way up, proving himself at each level. He coached quarterbacks at Presbyterian and Henderson State and then was the offensive coordinator at Southwest Baptist. Then, it was on to Arkansas-Monticello as offensive coordinator there, and from there to West Alabama where he spent three years as offensive coordinator before becoming the head coach.
In the tough Gulf South Conference, the SEC of Division II, he won 56 and lost 21 as the head coach of both West Alabama and West Georgia. He won league titles and was Coach of the Year both places.
All the while, Will Hall told me in a brief conversation Tuesday afternoon, Southern Miss was a job he coveted.
“I know the history there, I know you can win there, and I always felt like it would be a good fit for me,” he said. “We’re gonna get it rolling again, step by step, handshake by handshake. I can’t wait.”
Bobby Hall, admittedly prejudiced, believes his son will win – and big – at Southern Miss.
“Will wants to be there,” Bobby Hall said. “He wants to be the head football coach at Southern Miss. That really makes a difference.”
Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Dr. Jennifer Bryan. Dr. Bryan was the first female elected as chair of the Mississippi State Medical Associations Board of Trustees. She educates lawmakers on global issues that affect medicine and emphasizes the importance of patient communication. She is a family physician in Flowood, Mississippi. Marshall and Dr. Bryan talk about how Mississippi will fare until the coming COVID vaccines are widely available in 2021. She also talks about how the medical community is holding up in the face of long hours and stressful conditions.
Bettye Bell keeps a photo of her son Charoyd, who is incarcerated at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, on the mantle in the living room of her home in Natchez. “I don’t know that (EMCF officials are) doing anything…All I can tell you is as a mom, it’s very stressful,” she said. Photo provided by the Bell family.
Bettye Bell talked to her son, Charoyd Bell, on the phone for just five minutes before he had to hang up.
During the Sept. 28 phone call she took from her home in Natchez, Bettye Bell learned from her son, who is currently incarcerated at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF) in Lauderdale County, that the prison was on lockdown due to some people in his unit testing positive for COVID-19.
According to her son, a lockdown doesn’t mean much.
“They’re not able to social distance that I’m aware of. They’re all co-mingled, be they have (COVID-19) or not. So that’s not safe,” Bettye Bell said. “I don’t know that (EMCF officials) are doing anything extra in terms of providing medicines or whatever to help. I can’t say that they’re doing any of that. All I can tell you is as a mom, it’s very stressful.”
As COVID-19 numbers in Mississippi continue to climb and stretch hospitals, health care workers and others to the limit, family members say they’re concerned about the health and safety of their loved ones who are incarcerated within the state’s overcrowded prison system and feel left in the dark by prison officials.
As of Nov. 30, MDOC reported 902 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the incarcerated population and 1,380 incarcerated individuals who have tested negative. These figures include cases in both state facilities and private ones, like EMCF.
CDC guidelines state if someone has COVID-19, the person must separate from other people as much as possible, must wear a mask, stay six feet away from other people and seek medical attention.
Charoyd Bell, left, told his mother, Bettye Bell, center, and sister, Brittany Bell, right, that there was an outbreak in his prison, EMCF, in September, but MDOC has reported only one outbreak at the Marshall County Correctional Facility in November since the coronavirus pandemic began in early March. Photo provided by the Bell family.
MDOC lists on its website certain protocols that are in place to protect the incarcerated population and the department’s employees, and the guidelines include providing masks and disinfecting measures.
“Social distancing should be practiced as much as possible for both staff and inmates. Staff and inmates are encouraged to follow health guidelines from the CDC,” MDOC’s website states.
“I feel like the issue here is that because these people are incarcerated, they are not deemed worthy to have the same amount of protections that we are out here even though they are in even more closely confined spaces with even less capability to social distance on their own,” said Charoyd Bell’s sister Brittany Bell, a Natchez native who currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Mississippi Today contacted MDOC four times with specific questions about what type of masks are distributed and how often and whether MDOC is actively encouraging and enforcing social distancing in their facilities. The department did not respond to any of those requests. In a press release earlier this year, MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain said that the state department has been working with private prison operators to conduct testing “to try to prevent any introduction of the virus into our facilities.”
“We have been working with… private operators all year trying to prevent outbreaks by performing strict testing of each person who enters the facilities while enforcing masks, social distancing, and constant sanitization,” Cain said. “We have separated and quarantined all affected inmates and have stopped all movements between prisons.”
Although Charoyd Bell, who’s been incarcerated at EMCF in Lauderdale County since December 2019, told his mother and sister there was an outbreak in his prison in September, MDOC has reported only one outbreak at the Marshall County Correctional Facility in November since the coronavirus pandemic began in early March.
According to MDOC, at least 69 incarcerated Mississippians have died in MDOC custody since March, with the most recent death reported by the department on Nov. 30.
Troy Guidroz, 75, was incarcerated at Mississippi State Penitentiary and had been hospitalized since June. He died on Nov. 25, and MDOC has not yet determined whether Guidroz’s death or any of the other 68 deaths were be caused by COVID-19.
“Are we getting all of the information, one, of what’s happening in the prison system? And two, is the system doing its best job to keep these people healthy and safe?” Brittany Bell said.
Bettye Bell sent a letter to MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain in July asking for her son’s early release and home arrest due to his pre-existing conditions and status as a non-violent offender. Charoyd Bell, pictured, is still incarcerated at EMCF, and Bettye Bell has still not heard back from MDOC. Photo provided by the Bell family.
In May 2020, the Mississippi Center for Justice, the MacArthur Justice Center and the ACLU of Mississippi filed a class action lawsuit against MDOC for the department’s “inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic at Mississippi’s two largest prisons — Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) and South Mississippi Correctional Institute (SMCI),” where more than 5,350 Mississippians are currently incarcerated.
The lawsuit stated that the two prisons were overcrowded and that individuals who had reported having COVID-19 symptoms were not immediately tested or isolated to prevent the spread of the virus.
Mississippians incarcerated at CMCF in Pearl and SMCI near Leakesville were described as living among rows of bunk beds only four feet apart with shared access to toilets, sinks and showers and limited access to hot water and soap, according to the lawsuit.
“Some of the cell blocks are open bays, so it’s basically just a really big room where you have 50 to 100 people in there all just packed in there with no separation, no individual private space,” said Joshua Tom, legal director of the ACLU of Mississippi. “On top of that, you have the inability to keep common spaces and their personal bunk spaces clean due to the lack of sufficient cleaning supplies and lack of sufficient soap. And those are just to name a few things.”
The lawsuit also highlighted that many people in prison are elderly and have pre-existing conditions such as HIV, high blood pressure and cholesterol, asthma and cancer, making them especially susceptible to COVID-19, stating that they are at an “increased risk of contracting, becoming severely ill from, and/or dying from COVID-19.”
Bettye Bell sent a letter to MDOC and Cain, the commissioner, in July 2020 asking for her son’s early release and home arrest because of his pre-existing health conditions. Her son Charoyd Bell, a non-violent offender who was convicted in 2019 of cruelty to animals, larceny and possession of a weapon, has high blood pressure, obesity and hereditary heart issues. She still has not received word from MDOC or Cain, despite U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s recommendation of home arrest for at-risk and non-violent offenders within the prison system.
“There’s no way that (the prison system is) going to do what needs to be done to save (Charoyd’s) life if he does get sick,” Bettye Bell said.
In August 2020, MDOC, ACLU, the MacArthur Justice Center and the Mississippi Center for Justice reached an agreement with MDOC on the grounds that the department would implement certain safety protocols to better protect incarcerated Mississippians, though MDOC has not been transparent in how active these measures currently are.
“It should be the Mississippi Department of Corrections and all of the prison systems’ priority to make sure that it’s the safest, the cleanest, whatever it can be and definitely not the co-mingling of incarcerated persons who have COVID-19 and those who don’t,” Brittany Bell said. “That just seems like a complete and clear disregard for life.”
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 Wednesday, December 2:
New cases: 2,457| New Deaths: 15
Total Hospitalizations: 1,158
Total cases: 156,868| Total Deaths: 3,851
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:
