Coronavirus cases are down in Mississippi. The numbers are less than 250 per day. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says the nearly $30 million grant from the Central Disease Control is coming at a good time. He says they can use it to provide education and help restore services to the health department that were lost because of funding issues.
"A lot of it is going to be data integrity making sure we have a good awareness of where our gaps are. We're going to be engaging partners to make sure we make vaccine available, like the same kind of stuff were doing now. It'll help us ramp it up even more, so people can get vaccine where they are," said Dobbs.
Dobbs says now is the time to be vaccinated. Reports of variants in the U.S. are growing, even in Mississippi. There are 78 cases of the variants in the state. Seventy are the U.K. variant, which Dobbs says is more contagious and deadly. He says the vaccines reduce symptoms and hospitalizations from infections.
"And we know the vaccine works. So this is a chance not only to take care of the previous wave, make sure we don't have those going on. But also it's a preemptive strategy to deal with the coming surge of potential variants," said Dobbs.
For those who are hesitant to get the vaccine, Dobbs is encouraging them to do so. More than a half a million Mississippians have been vaccinated. Dobbs says if 85 to 90 percent of people in the state get the shots, it will greatly reduce the spread of coronavirus.
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