Coronavirus cases in Mississippi have been steadily increasing during October, and according to Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the Mississippi state health officer, there have been over 300 K-12 student cases and over 6,000 K-12 students having to quarantine.
“Our equilibrium is unravelling,” Dobbs wrote on Twitter. “We know what it takes if we will just do it.”
This comes just one week after Gov. Tate Reeves allowed the Mississippi mask mandate to expire. He was the first governor in the country to do so, and many schools in Mississippi are still upholding a mask mandate.
According to The New York Times, Mississippi is one of 27 states where cases are having a daily average of at least 15 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week. The New York Times also reported that as of Oct. 7, at least 24 new coronavirus deaths and 563 new cases were reported.
As of Oct. 8, there have been at least 102,819 coronavirus cases and 3,074 deaths in Mississippi since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Since Oct. 2, the University of Mississippi has done asymptomatic testing on 819 students and faculty for the coronavirus, only four of which tested positive.
There are currently 25 active student cases, with eight students in quarantine on campus, while one is in isolation.
