New COVID-19 Cases Continue to Decrease for LOU Community

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Oxford continues to slowly decline.

In the second week of September, there were 134 new cases reported in Lafayette County. In the last seven days, 114 new cases have been reported.

Lafayette County School District reported two new cases last week, both faculty/staff. There have been a total of 21 cases in the district since Aug. 3.

On Monday, the Oxford School District reported two new cases – one teacher and one high school student. The teacher works at Oxford Middle School. The district has had a total of 19 cases since classes started on Aug. 24. Students who test positive and are doing online school are not included in the weekly counts on the district’s website.

The University of Mississippi has also seen a downward trend of positive cases of COVID-19 over the last two weeks. On Monday, the school reported 37 new cases in the last seven days, down from the week prior where there were 58 new cases during the first week of September.

There have been 720 cases at Ole Miss since August.

The majority of Oxford’s new cases continue to be people in the 18 to 24 year-old age group.

Since many students are here in Oxford but live elsewhere full-time, those positive cases are often reported to their hometown and state so it is unclear how many of UM’s cases are included in the MSDH’s reported cases for Lafayette County.

There have been 39 deaths in Lafayette County associated with the virus – 28 being patients in a long-term care facility.

Close to 1,100 people from Lafayette County who tested positive are white, 360 were black and the rest are listed as either “unknown” or “other.”

As of Friday, there were about 150 active (less than 14 days since diagnosis) cases in Lafayette County, bringing the county’s total to 2,198 since March.