World News | Mississippi Opens 2nd Field Hospital in Jackson

Jackson (US), Aug 18 (AP) Mississippi, one of the nation's least vaccinated states, has opened its second field hospital to treat a surge of coronavirus patients.

The Christian charity relief group Samaritan's Purse arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, with more than 50 medical professionals, setting up tents with 32 beds in a garage at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Recently, an emergency field hospital with federal backing was set up elsewhere on the medical center campus.

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Health officials say the surging delta variant is overwhelming the state's hospital system. On July 27, some 726 people were hospitalized with the coronavirus. By Aug. 16, that figure stood at 1,623. Only 34% of the state's population is fully vaccinated.

Mississippi's State Health Officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs says this wave is impacting younger, unvaccinated people just as schools are resuming. More children are hospitalized, and one died last week.

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State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers says about 20,000 Mississippi students are currently quarantined for COVID-19 exposure -- 4.5% of the public school population.

The medical center's leader, LouAnn Woodward, renewed pleas for people to get vaccinated. She says unlike the natural disaster in Haiti, the situation in Mississippi is a “disaster of our own making.”

“We as a state, as a collective, have failed to respond in a unified way to a common threat, we have failed to use the tools that we have to protect ourselves,” she says.

There's been a total of 392,300 cases and 7,880 confirmed deaths in a state of 3 million people. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)