COVID-19 Cases Increasing Locally, Statewide

The numbers of cases of the COVID-19 are back on the rise in Lafayette County.

On Tuesday, Oxford Emergency Management Coordinator Jimmy Allgood told the Oxford Board of Aldermen there were 43 new cases reported since Friday in Lafayette County.

“Our seven-day average of new cases is 5.14 cases per day,” Allgood said. “So we are seeing our case numbers going up slightly.”

As of today, Lafayette County gained another eight new cases, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

Thus far, Lafayette County has had only one positive case of the Delta variant. Of the 13 variant cases recorded for Lafayette County, 11 are the Alpha, or UK, variant and one is the Epsilon, or California, variant.

Statewide, there are 365 Delta variant cases with most – 201, being in Hinds County.

On Wednesday, the MSDH reported 961 new cases of COVID-19 across the state with eight new deaths.

The University of Mississippi reported six cases among students and faculty since July 1.

As of Tuesday, Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford had 10 patients with COVID-19, with two in ICU.

Across the state, hospitals reported 445 people with the virus were in a hospital with 152 patients in ICU. Hospitalizations peaked in January 2021 with 1,400 people in Mississippi hospitals with COVID-19 and have continued to decline since; however, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals started to an upward move at the end of June.