MSDH closes COVID-19 drive-thru sites as severe weather threatens
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Updated: 9:10 AM CDT Mar 17, 2021
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Updated: 9:10 AM CDT Mar 17, 2021
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Thank you. Thank you. Listen, thank everyone for joining us. As you're aware, the governor announced yesterday the vaccine eligibility is open for every use recipient age 16 years of age and older. We're excited to be able to open up this eligibility because we know there's a lot of demand out there. We've had phenomenal success and getting vaccine out in different parts of our population. Obviously, we've cleared it out initially for mostly high risk votes. And Dr buyers will talk about what a good job we're making. What progress we're seeing in our older individuals are 75 plus or 65 plus. And we know these are the age groups where the majority of the severe illness and the deaths occurred. So certainly it's the right time to do it. We need to get as many vaccines administered as quickly as possible. And we've already got appointments scheduled out some weeks ahead. So we see that it may be a couple of weeks before a lot of folks we'll be able to get vaccines. But now is the time to open it up so that we can maximize the delivery and the administration of these vaccines as far as the 16 to 17 year olds right now, only fighter is appropriate for individuals in that age group. And so I think Jim's gonna address that. We do have a mechanism to make sure that 16 and 17 year olds can get referred for the Pfizer vaccine. I think we've had another phenomenal process, especially through our drive thru locations. Um, I think the department health team and the National Guard have done phenomenal work not only in productivity but efficiency and in customer service. And I would like to use this as a model for our agency operations going forward, very, very proud of our teams. The other thing I didn't want to mention real quickly is we have launched the Center of Excellence program. About two weeks ago, we started a program where we partner with different hospital health systems to try to help supply critical community needs and to become a member of the Center of Excellence Program. You have to you have to agree to participate in three key elements. One of them is going to be supplying vaccine to the general population in the community, not just your patients, but all comers Also included is the provision of the monoclonal antibody, like the bamboo never mob or the Regeneron and being a referral site so local physicians can refer in if they have a high risk patient who needs immediately immediate access to that treatment. And the third thing is working to address health disparities in your community. Right now, we have 43 different hospital health systems enrolled in the program, and today we will announce the addition of Of those are four our new words that have not yet been published, including Alliance Health System, Forest General Hospital and Partnership with Hattiesburg Clinic, Knox City General Hospital and Winston Medical Centers. So we'd like to express our gratitude for them joining the effort. They've been phenomenal work and as a quick sort of shout out a lot of these folks, folks are doing great work. Um, not to say that everybody's not doing this, this level of wonderful activity. But as an example of ST Dominic's got update today, they're going to schools. They're going to churches, they're going to homeless shelters. They're getting vaccine where it needs to be given. So a combination of the high efficiency of the drive thru locations run by the Department of Health and National Guard, and they are fantastic partnerships is really going to help us move the needle and get where we need to be, not only with vaccinations, but with beaten back, the covid pandemic. So that's all I have right now, and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Dr Paul Myers. Hey, thanks, Doctor Dogs. So? So today we're reporting out an additional 369 cases and 27 deaths. Um, I know we have talked about for a number of weeks the declines that we've been seeing in both our case numbers and deaths, and this has been very encouraging. We've continued to see those declines, but as we've talked about before in our case numbers, it looks as if we are having some leveling off. Um, the the number of deaths we're seeing now with the decreases is encouraging. We're seeing a decreased impact on our nursing homes, and certainly that's been very welcome. Um, in in the week ending March 10th, we actually recorded no, um, long term care or nursing home deaths, which is a huge win for and our total number of nursing home outbreaks is now below 40 statewide and continues to drop. Um, but it's important to understand that even though that we've made some great success with our vaccine efforts and we'll talk about that in a second, but also seeing the declines in the number of cases and the decreased impact in deaths. Um, certainly we're seeing decreased hospitalizations were seeing, um, are syndrome IQ surveillance Dropping All of those are great indicators that we continue to move in the right direction. I do want to remind everybody that now is not the time to be complacent. Um, with the, um, increased eligibility for all Mississippians over the age of 16. Certainly we encourage everybody to get vaccinated. But we also want to remind everybody that when you're in a public place, um, it's still a good idea to wear a mask. It's still a good idea to gather in in smaller groups. Um, and remember now that, uh, it's even safer when folks are fully vaccinated, um, and and and remember to physically distance. And if we all continue to do those parts, we can see that that curve continued to decline along with our vaccination efforts. We've talked about the impact of Covid 19 on our older individuals, especially individuals over the age of 50. And we know that those age groups account for about 90% of the mortality that we've seen associated with covid. And so we have made concerted efforts, um, to vaccinate those age groups. And and we know that those people 65 older and even more so the individuals 75 older have been greatly impacted If we look at the, um, estimated percent of vaccination for those age groups based on the estimated population for those age groups in Mississippi, we have now, um, vaccinated almost 60% of our 75 older individuals with at least one dose of vaccine. Additionally, 43% of those individuals over the age of 75 have completed and are fully vaccinated. Um, these are these are great strides to continue that effort to minimize the impact on this vulnerable population, we look at our individuals 50 and older. Um, 43% of our total estimated population of 50 and older, um, have received at least one dose, and of those, 25% have been fully vaccinated. So we're continuing to make gains in in those age groups. And if you fall in those age groups, I would encourage you to, uh, continue to to, um, uh, reach out to get vaccinated. If you have a family member who is in one of those age groups, um, please help them get vaccinated as we've done in the past. We're updating our website with the sites in Mississippi where you can, um, look and its Internet interactive website, where you can find a site close to you that's either a pharmacy or a hospital or clinic or a, uh M S D H drive through where you can. You can get vaccinated when we look at our total doses administered for the state for today. Um, in Mississippi, we've administered over 900,000 vaccines, and of those, about 330,000 Mississippians have been fully vaccinated. Almost 600,000 Mississippians have received at least one dose. Um, we did add some data to our website today. That list, um, the total dose is administered. The total number of people receiving at least one does, and the total number of people who are fully vaccinated by county. I would encourage you to look at the website and review that data. It's important to understand what each one of those mean. Um, these are the number of doses that are administered by county of residence. So that means this is where these individuals live, not where they were vaccinated. So, um, the number of people receiving at least one does. That includes either one dose of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson. The number of people who are fully vaccinated includes those individuals who have received two doses of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, and because it's a one dose series, only one dose of the Johnson and Johnson when we look at our racial data that we have for vaccination on our website, and I would encourage you to look at that, Um, right now, since we started our vaccination efforts that have been ongoing since mid December, 27% of the total dose is administered in Mississippi have gone to African Americans. Just a bit over 60% have gone to white individuals. I would encourage you to look at that data. We will soon publish this data on our website. But when we look at the total number of doses administered by race over time, um, this last week, the week ending March 13th, 38% of our total doses administered were among African Americans. And, um, 51% of those total doses administered were among white individuals. So I would encourage you to continue to watch our website. We will continue to update the information, provide additional clarity and granularity, um, of the data that we're reporting and make sure that we're getting accurate and timely data out. So, um, Dr Dobbs, that's everything for me. Um, and thank you. Okay, Dr Sutton. Again. Welcome. And can you talk to us? You have been leading our health equity branch in the COVID. Response efforts, So you have a lot of exciting stuff to talk about. Would you be able to share that with us now? Sure. I'll be glad to um, I think one thing that we found out early on issues around access and and making sure that it's available uh, statewide, especially the vulnerable populations and those at risk. Well, we're excited to getting ready to launch our new partnership that we have with community health centers. We're going to be partnered with six community health centers, and so we're going to make it available through our hotline that you can call our hotline and press two and and ask for it that if you want, if there's a church, there's a community organization. If there's other partners in the community that want to host the vaccination site or event, we're gonna we're gonna get that name, that contact number, the organization number and work towards having that event in that community. Um, that's gonna be statewide. And so this is a partnership, that we're partners right now. We're working with six community health centers across the state. We plan to increase that increase that number. But it's a way to bring down the barriers and provide greater access. Um, we have a lot of access points around the state and, as Dr Dobbs mentioned were increasing that. But now we have the opportunity to reach, uh, rural areas, uh, reach, uh, specific population and specific communities. And so we're excited to, um, to do that and it's gonna be a process where you just contact us give us a name and organizational number, and we're going to work. Towards that end, we've had some great success as it relates to testing and using that as a as a model and working with community partners who our Hispanic community are Vietnamese community and working with those particular groups and targeting particular groups. And so we see this as a, uh, the other extension to that on the vaccination side because we're still doing testing. Uh, but we know that the opportunity here is really in the vaccine. Um, and so we're this is going to be an opportunity for us to kind of continue that we continue to work with our churches around the state. We're working with head starts around the state. We're working with our hbcu s and doing some different things there. So we're excited to bring this to bear and continue that that work and to continue to increase, uh, something, I despaired, uh, numbers and and address some other challenges, as we have in reaching this, um, population. And that's where I would leave it for now. And I toss it back to you live. Thank you, Dr Sudden. And now we would like to have Mr Jim Craig talk about all the vaccination sites and also specifically about how to go about getting those visor vaccine appointments. Jim. Oh, thank you, lives, and thank you all for being with us today. There are obviously many opportunities in Mississippi to receive covid vaccination, and those do include our 24 state and county drive through vaccination sites. Um, in fact, to help improve access, especially our Mississippi Delta area, we have county sites in Oklahoma County and Oliver the Floor Washington Warrant Sharkey County that's actually covering both Sharky and S Aquafina. And starting next week, we'll be operating a site in Claiborne County, and it will be hosted by all corn and we at the university, uh, for that, that site, beginning next week. Coming back station is also available through many of our healthcare partners and providers that have enrolled in the in the process and many pharmacies in the state as a federal pharmacy contract that is providing some of those vaccine as well as some through our partnership. Programs are being provided vaccine to provide two individuals in Mississippi, as Dr buyers mentioned as a great map that is on our website www dot healthy m s dot com. It shows the locations of where these vaccination sites are being a health care provider, a pharmacy or one of our state or county drive thru locations. This morning we released over 37,000 appointments through the state. Covid vaccination site of that system can be found at covid vaccine dot UMC dot e. D u and appointments are out there and available this morning as far as the fights are, just so you can understand where some of the fires of locations are, are state and county drive thru locations at DeSoto County at the lander's complex, as well as Oxfords Readiness Center in Lee County at Barnes Crossing at Lounge at the Fairview Baptist Church. Smith Wills here in Hinds Canton High School in Madison Trust Mark and ranking the Coliseum in Neshoba, the Magnolia Center in Jones and Lake Terrorist Convention Center in Forest are all currently operating Fizer sites. Starting next week, we will add three additional Pfizer sites that being the Civic center in Panola County, the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Harrison County and the Fair Grounds in Jackson. For those that are 16 or 17 years of age appointments cannot be made online. They have to be made through our call center. So calling the hotline and selecting the 16 17 appointment plan will get those appointments made at a fighter site. Pfizer is currently the only vaccine approved for those 16 and 17 years. Page. If we look at, uh, testing, just a quick update on that are testing. Numbers are down a little bit. I think that reflects in some ways to the our caseload that we've seen in our hospitalizations, going down as well. But testing is still available. Free testing is still available here at the Capitol City location at the Farmers Market. It west the corner of West and, uh, Woodrow Wilson, and it's open. 7 a.m. I'm sorry. It's open seven day, six days a week, Monday through Saturday for testing for covid. Oh, with that lives, I'll kick it back over to you for questions. Mhm