Health

Eugene

(62,623 posts) Sun Aug 15, 2021, 04:50 PM Aug 2021

After big county fair, virus hits hard in rural Mississippi

Source: Associated Press

After big county fair, virus hits hard in rural Mississippi

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
August 13, 2021

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A rural Mississippi community is overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, two weeks after hosting the Neshoba County Fair that drew thousands who lived in cabins, attended shoulder-to-shoulder outdoor concerts and listened to stump speeches — including one by the Republican governor, who decried federal masking guidance as “foolish.”

Frustrated by rising COVID-19 infections, the chief executive officer of the 25-bed Neshoba General Hospital posted a message on social media this week challenging Gov. Tate Reeves to step up and show leadership.

“@tatereeves hospitals and healthcare workers need you to help us. Where are you?” Lee McCall wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “We are overwhelmed with the surge of Covid and understaffed to safely care for our patients. Our incredible staff are holding it together but we are all at our breaking point.”

This week alone, Mississippi has broken its single-day record of new COVID-19 cases three times, with more than 3,000 cases reported Tuesday, more than 4,000 Thursday and more than 5,000 Friday. The state on Thursday broke records for patients hospitalized and patients in ICUs with COVID-19; those numbers increased again Friday. The previous records were in January, before vaccinations were widely available.

Reeves posted Wednesday on Twitter: “In spite of the angry rhetoric coming from so many, our emergency management team is doing what it does - we are calmly dealing with an ever-changing environment to meet the needs of Mississippi.”

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4 replies

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After big county fair, virus hits hard in rural Mississippi (Original Post) Eugene Aug 2021 OP

Sad and tragic delivered to us on the shoulders of stupid dutch777 Aug 2021 #1

Tate Reeves is willfully & purposely killing MS citizens for political gain. CottonBear Aug 2021 #2

The same fair Casady1 Aug 2021 #3

There must have been a lot of undocumented migrants at that fair. Chainfire Aug 2021 #4

dutch777

(3,407 posts)

1. Sad and tragic delivered to us on the shoulders of stupid

Reply to Eugene (Original post)

Sun Aug 15, 2021, 05:02 PM

Aug 2021

For those who may not know, a 25 bed rural hospital usually is what is termed a Critical Access Hospital. They are meant to be first lines of defense for things like a heart attack, a car or construction accident, the appendicitis. While they have an OR, ER and a small ICU and necessary imaging equipment but they are not a medical defense in depth that a major multi-hundred bed medical center offers. In short, they are capable but fragile as they don't have large numbers of elective surgeries and specialty departments that in a pinch, like a Covid surge, bigger and more robust facilities can shut down "borrow" docs and nurses from. I truly feel for the docs and nurses buried in this.