While some hospitals in Mississippi are seeing increases of patients with COVID-19, causing some concern about the strain on the healthcare system across the state, Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford is not dealing with the same shortage of beds.
According to the Mississippi State Department of Health, as of Monday, Baptist had 181 staffed hospital beds with 52 available beds. Only 19 were being used by patients with COVID-19.
The hospital has 24 ICU beds. On Monday, five patients with COVID-19 were in ICU and seven beds were empty in the ICU.
Since Oct. 4, the number of patients in the hospital with the virus has averaged around 20, with 21 being the most on Oct. 4 to the fewest at 14 on Oct. 11.
On Tuesday, Oxford Emergency Management Coordinator Jimmy Allgood said active cases in Lafayette County have started to “slowly decline.”
“We were in the 100’s two weeks ago, and as of today, we have 86 active cases,” he said. “Wearing masks and taking (social distancing) precautions have paid off.”
On Monday, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced a new mask mandate for nine counties – Chickasaw, Claiborne, DeSoto, Forrest, Itawamba, Jackson, Lamar, Lee and Neshoba.
The mandate comes after numbers released Monday showed six major hospitals in many of those counties had no available ICU capacity.
Mayor Robyn Tannehill said she has been asked by citizens that since Oxford seems to be doing “OK”, why is there still a mask mandate?
“There is a reason why Lafayette County doesn’t look like some of the counties around us,” she said. “We’ve kept in a plan in place since April, and it’s paid off. The inconvenience of wearing a mask has allowed us to keep our businesses open.”
