Click on the above links or scroll down to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi.

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

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Delbert Hosemann during the opening day of the legislative session in the Mississippi House chambers at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, January, 2020.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said he hopes it is “business as usual as much as possible” when the Legislature returns on May 18 from its coronavirus-induced recess.

Both Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, and House Speaker Philip Gunn announced the return date in simultaneous news releases Monday.

As the releases were sent out, Hosemann, in his first year as lieutenant governor, was speaking during a virtual meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government/capitol press corps. He said the plans are to take up most of the legislation that was pending when the recess occurred in mid-March and then take up the overall state budget in June.

Hosemann also said he hopes to pass a teacher pay raise when the session resumes as well as increase funding for early childhood education.

Referring to the teacher pay raise and early childhood education, he said, “The things we need to do are generational. Hopefully this pandemic is temporary.”

Early in session, the Senate passed essentially a $1,000 per year pay raise that will cost about $75 million annually. It is pending before the House.

“I believe we passed a bill and we need to go forward with it,” Hosemann said.

While Hosemann stressed the importance of passing the pay raise, he also conceded that passing an overall state budget for the coming fiscal year, beginning July 1, might be difficult. State revenue collections are expected to drop significantly during the coming months because of the dramatic economic slowdown associated with COVID-19. He said he and Gunn had been in communications with state agency heads asking them to look for ways to save funds during the final months of the current fiscal year to help alleviate some of the demands on the upcoming budget year.

While Hosemann said the plans are to resume the session where it ended in early March with business as usual, he conceded that some bills that normally would have passed might be sacrificed because of the focus that the Legislature might need to place on the pandemic.

For instance, he said leaders are exploring the possibility of purchasing for emergency situations a supply of medical masks, gowns and other items that have been in short supply at times during efforts to combat the pandemic.

And, he said there will be a focus on voting that was not present before the recess. He said laws might need to be amended to ensure the safety of people going to polls to vote if the coronavirus is still a factor during the general election in November.

“We need to pray it does not come back but prepare in case it does,” he said.

Hosemann said Senate Elections Chair Jennifer Branning, R-Philadelphia, and Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, have been looking at elections laws. Blount has a background in voting issues. Hosemann did not commit as to what changes might need to be made, but said everything from expanding early voting in case of emergencies to providing more protection at the polls will be considered.

“We want every (eligible person) to vote and we want them to be in a safe environment to do that,” he said.

Mississippi is one of a handful of states (less than 10) that do not have “no excuse” early voting or have not taken up measures to help ensure the safety of voters in November

Hosemann said consideration also is being given to what safety measures will need to be in place in the Mississippi Capitol when the session resumes. Hosemann said the press will be allowed in the building to cover the session, but indicated that access might be limited to some groups to deal with the need to continue social distancing.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Gov. Tate Reeves and Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs speak to the media about the coronavirus during a press conference at the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, March 26, 2020.

Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, listened during a phone call Friday morning as Mississippi Health Officer Thomas Dobbs walked her through the details he and Gov. Tate Reeves planned to announce later that day that would relax parts of Mississippi’s previous statewide shelter-in-place order.

Birx, who has been in close contact with Mississippi officials, expressed support for the plan and optimism about the state’s pandemic outlook, according to a source with direct knowledge of the call.

A few hours later, as hundreds of thousands of Mississippians watched and listened live, Reeves announced he would allow most retail businesses in the state to reopen, but not close-contact establishments such as hair and nail salons, barbershops, spas, gyms, casinos and entertainment venues.

“This weighs very, very heavily on me,” Reeves told Mississippi Today in a phone interview on Thursday, the day before he announced his new order. “We’re doing this methodically and cautiously. Obviously the health and safety of Mississippians is my top priority, but part of that conversation has to be about whether to reopen the economy. It’s a difficult balance to strike.”

In the days leading up to the Friday announcement, government officials across the state had considered it to be an inflection point in the state’s response to the pandemic. State agency heads and even administrators at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the largest medical center in the state, prepared for the governor to completely reverse his previous decision to order many Mississippians to stay at home.

Reeves, Dobbs and several people close to the two officials spoke several times last week with Mississippi Today to provide insight into the deliberations that would culminate in Reeves’ Friday announcement. The governor’s chief consideration last week: weighing the state’s health data and newly issued reopening guidance from the White House versus the political and economic effects of relaxing or extending his earlier shelter-in-place order.

The state’s COVID-19 data available to Reeves and Dobbs on Friday morning, paired with the White House’s guidance on how states should start to reopen, showed it was too soon to fully roll back shelter-in-place restrictions. Mississippi Today analyzed the data available to the two officials on Friday shortly before they announced the decision.

Cases will never flatten or decrease until the disease is eradicated. But metrics such as the number of new cases, when folks become ill and total tests completed, when analyzed both daily and weekly, paint a picture of the state’s progress in flattening or plateauing the curve of cases. 

Before moving to lift shelter-in-place orders and reopening state economies, the White House guidelines issued April 16 generally suggest that states should see three things over a two-week period before beginning to roll back shelter-in-place orders:

• Flu- and COVID-like symptoms should trend down.

• Number of new daily cases should decrease or represent a smaller proportion of all tests, while test volume increases or flattens.

• Hospitals are able to treat patients without crisis care, while also ensuring health care workers can access tests.

By Friday, Mississippi had not met the first two White House thresholds. And while total tests run have consistently increased and continue to outpace most other states per capita, the average daily tests run and weekly total tests have started to decline. As of Friday, looking back a week, total weekly new cases grew by 25 percent and total weekly tests decreased by 27 percent.

Tracking new and total cases is dependent upon testing — the more tests completed, the more cases are identified, traced and, ideally, isolated. Last week saw the most and second-most new cases ever last week, at 300 and 281, though officials have reiterated that testing delays and reporting lags — even when operating efficiently — can lead to varied peaks and valleys in new cases reported any given day.

As for the health care system’s capacity, Mississippi officials have said the state successfully thwarted capacity issues and avoided extreme projections, meaning Mississippi’s data satisfied the third White House guideline. However, while intensive care unit and ventilator usage remain relatively stable, the number of patients hospitalized with confirmed and suspected COVID-19 is still growing.

By most metrics, Mississippi’s new cases have not leveled or declined – and appear to still be climbing. Over the last two weeks, chronological new cases over a rolling seven-day period averaged 159 daily cases two weeks ago, 189 daily cases one week ago, and 234 daily cases Friday. (Averaged daily cases over a week reached a new peak over the weekend at 249 new cases Saturday.)

The burden of cases and deaths is disproportionately carried by African Americans. As of Friday, black Mississippians comprised 53 percent of cases and 61 percent of deaths despite accounting for less than 40 percent of the state’s populations.  Limited data suggest this is echoed nationally.

Shalondra Rollins was taking care of her health and climbing out of poverty. Why did she die of COVID-19?

Though the state’s COVID-19 data failed to satisfy all the White House guidelines, political pressure to reopen the state crescendoed last week as Reeves was weighing his decision.

Last week, Republican governors in other Southern states ignored those guidelines and loosely reversed their previous shelter-in-place restrictions. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican whom Reeves has contacted regularly in recent days, received sharp criticism from both sides of the political aisle — including from President Donald Trump — after drastically reversing his previous shelter-in-place order.

When asked last week if Trump’s suggestions were playing a role in his decision-making, Reeves replied: “What (Trump) has said to me is to open up Mississippi as soon as it’s safe to do so.”

As the influence of national and regional politics crept into the state, Reeves and his political advisers were also strapped with the reality that the central pillars of his successful 2019 gubernatorial campaign — a steady state economy and positive trends in public education — are breaking down.

After Reeves had issued stay at home restrictions and the virus continues to spread, small businesses across the state are struggling to survive or are closing outright, and unemployment filings are at a record high. Public education advocates fear the state’s testing gains will be erased as schools have been closed since spring break and many students and districts have inconsistent access to virtual learning options.

Voters like Jessica Cobb, a self-described conservative Republican in Gulfport who said she voted for Reeves last year, have lost faith in the governor’s ability to lead.

“I know people who are hurting and wondering where their next meal is going to come from,” Cobb, who is unemployed and looking for work, told Mississippi Today. “They’re not getting the help they were promised, they don’t qualify for unemployment because they were self-employed. This is just insanity. It’s people’s livelihoods at stake. This state is a working class state, these people are working class people. He needs to open the state.”

In a Thursday phone interview with Mississippi Today, Reeves acknowledged that small business owners are struggling and called his late March defining of essential businesses “a mistake.”

“Defining any business as essential or not doesn’t take into consideration that any business is essential for many Mississippians,” Reeves said. “So many people have invested everything they have into building their small businesses, and they’re looking at this as the moment when they could lose everything they’ve worked their entire lives for. Government cannot be the reason that happens, and I’m doing everything I can to make sure it doesn’t.”

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs addresses media during a press conference at the State of Mississippi Woolfolk Building in Jackson, Miss.

But through the growing political pressures and criticisms from unemployed Mississippians and small business owners, Reeves has leaned into Dobbs as his closest adviser during the pandemic, several people close to the two leaders told Mississippi Today. Dobbs, an epidemiologist by training, is the head of the Mississippi State Department of Health, a state agency independent of the governor’s office. Dobbs reports to an appointed Board of Health, not Reeves.

Dobbs himself ratcheted up his cautionary rhetoric last week, conceding that it appears the curve is flattening but going out of his way to publicly use phrasing like “still very, very concerned about outbreaks in places where people are close together,” “big box stores are still pretty crowded, it makes me very nervous,” and “I’m not seeing a lot of people wearing masks in the community.”

“The governor has been very thoughtful,” Dobbs told Mississippi Today in a phone interview on Tuesday. “He’s got a lot to balance and I certainly don’t envy certain decisions he has to make. He is extremely attentive to the health implications of this.”

Response to Reeves’ decision has varied, with critics believing that even the slight relaxation of the shelter-in-place order is irresponsible, and proponents believing that the decision was appropriate and measured.

Reeves clarified on Friday that though his new order is statewide, it will not preclude local governments from implementing tighter restrictions on their residents. For instance, if a municipality wants to close restaurants, that option would be available.

“I respect Governor Reeves safer-at-home order, and I appreciate him reopening our state’s economy slowly versus wide open as I feel that is a safer approach to slow the spread of COVID-19 and prevent a relapse in the future,” said Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams. “Leflore County’s numbers are not leveling off but climbing, which tells me we need more time to slow the spread even though strict measures have been put into place and enforced.”

Anna Wolfe and Bobby Harrison contributed to this report.

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When I heard that Bobby Rush had COVID-19, my stomach sank. We had just lost John Prine to the virus and the thought of losing a living legend like Bobby seemed too much. On Thursday, I read that he had beat the disease. And during a time when hope seems to be as scarce as toilet paper, I found joy.

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Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America

The Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mike Espy rematch rematch is shaping up to be competitive despite the current limitation on campaigning because of the coronavirus.

While the coronavirus has brought a halt to in-person campaigning for the November general election, incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and her Democratic opponent, former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, are still jockeying for electoral advantages.

That jockeying played out over the last few weeks as Congress took up and passed a fourth relief package to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the bill was considered, Hyde-Smith spent a considerable amount of time criticizing congressional Democrats, Espy in absentia, for holding up the latest relief package to get what she said was “unrelated” items added to the legislation.

Bobby Harrison

But the Espy campaign pointed out that after the legislation passed, Hyde-Smith sent out a news release touting those “unrelated” items as needed to help fight the pandemic.

Politics can be confusing.

About two weeks ago it became apparent that legislation was going to be considered to add more funds to the Paycheck Protection Program, which among other things provides forgivable loans to small businesses that use the money to continue to pay their employees for at least eight weeks during the significant economic downturn caused by COVID-19.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, apparently with the backing of Hyde-Smith, wanted the legislation to deal solely with the Paycheck Protection Program. He said as much to the full Senate.

But congressional Democrats said the program also should include funds for hospitals hit hard by the coronavirus, money for COVID-19 testing and funds to state and local governments that have seen their tax revenue plummet because of the economic downturn.

After Democrats blocked efforts to pass legislation dealing only with the Payroll Protection Program, Hyde-Smith tweeted on April 15, “Democrats must stop blocking new (Paycheck Protection) funding.”

In the end, Democrats prevailed in including funds for hospitals and for testing but not for beleaguered state and local governments.

Despite her objections to adding items other than the Payroll Protection Program, after the bill passed she praised the items added to the bill at the insistence of the Democrats.

“The ongoing needs and hardships spread across the health care system and our economy are obvious.  The longer the economic shutdown goes on, the more it becomes apparent that it is unsustainable.  This legislation is intended to help as we move toward a safe reopening of more day-to-day commerce across the nation,” Hyde-Smith said in a news release voicing her support for the bill she described as “adding paycheck Protection Program funds, further support for hospitals and testing.”

In the very same news release, she again criticized Democrats, saying “they delayed completion of this new legislation for more than a week with new demands on issues unrelated to important ongoing relief programs.”

Were those issues – funds for hospitals and coronavirus testing – important to deal with the pandemic or were they unrelated?

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary is running for U.S. Senate.

“If ever there was a demonstration of political hypocrisy, look no further than Sen. Hyde-Smith,” Espy alleged. “After a week of complaining about Democrats in the Senate trying to ensure the latest round of coronavirus relief included funding for hospitals and coronavirus testing, she is now all too happy to try and take credit and celebrate the very funding she was fighting against being in the bill.

Justin Brasell, a spokesperson for the Hyde-Smith campaign, countered, “It took the Democrats two weeks to agree to a deal that contains virtually nothing that Republicans ever opposed. Republicans have always supported more medical funding as soon as necessary… Democrats have delayed critical resources getting out the door at every turn. Is this the new precedent Mississippians should expect moving forward? To be exploited for partisan leverage?”

The bill McConnell wanted to pass and supported by Hyde-Smith would have simply increased funding for the Payroll Protection Program by $300 billion. Nothing else.

“I am literally talking about deleting the number 350 and writing 650 in its place,” McConnel said on the Senate floor before Democrats blocked that effort.

Earlier Brasell said more could be done later.

“It’s important to understand that this fourth relief bill is likely not the last legislation that will be needed as the nation continues to respond and recover from COVID-19,” he said.  “McConnell has tried to keep the focus on simply refunding the SBA Paycheck Protection Program. Aid for state and local government could be negotiated as part of future legislation.”

Money for hospitals and for testing already has been addressed. Everyone, despite the rhetoric, seem to concede it was needed.

In the 2018 special election to replace long-term Sen. Thad Cochran who resigned for health reasons, Espy and Hyde-Smith engaged in a spirited campaign. The rematch is shaping up to be just as competitive despite the limitation that could be placed on campaigning because of the coronavirus.

Disclosure: Mississippi Today, as a nonprofit news organization and a small business, applied for and received a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program in the amount of $257,500.

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