With health systems around the state being pushed to the limit amidst the resurgence of COVID-19 - particularly the Delta strain of the virus - Mississippi Speaker of the House Philip Gunn paid a visit to Forrest General Hospital on Aug. 18 to lend support in the fight against the disease, saying he would do everything in his power to “get it under control … and get past it."
Gunn said he has received reports from doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists - all of whom are working overtime in recent months - which he plans to bring back to Jackson and Washington, D.C. to help develop a plan to assist that personnel.
“We stand ready as a legislature to do whatever we have to do,” Gunn said. “We’ve got the financial resources from the federal government we can use; we talked a little about that this morning, and if it takes a special session for us to get those dollars out, I’m for that.
“We’re ready and poised to do what we can as a legislature to help our hospitals all around the state to fight this thing. We’re in a crisis situation, I believe, and I’m not just trying to be an alarmist; I’m basing that on the information I have received from hospitals around the state. This is one reason I’m here in person, is to see it for myself.”
As of Aug. 17, Mississippi had seen approximately 396,000 positive cases of the virus, with 4,085 new cases that day. The state had seen 7,916 deaths, with 36 new ones on that date.
Forrest County recorded 10,891 positive cases, with 115 new cases that day; the county reported 176 total deaths, with no new deaths that day. Lamar County had seen 8,667 positive cases, with 70 new cases on Aug. 17; the county has reported a total of 95 deaths.
Those numbers are the highest in the state since April.
“Obviously, the Delta variant has presented a new challenge for us,” Gunn said. “I’m no medical professional, but one of the charts (I was shown) showed the track record of this. It started in March of last year, and we saw the spike when it first hit … and the very first case in Mississippi was here in the Hattiesburg area.
"It went up, and then we saw the vaccinations come online, and then you saw the chart decline, and it’s been down. And then all of a sudden, there’s this enormous spike that went well past the spike of last year … and that’s the Delta variant. Now we’re seeing a younger group struggling with the Delta variant, and so that presents a new challenge."
In an effort to be personally available, Gunn has already visited the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson earlier in the week. After leaving Forrest General Hospital, the Speaker planned to tour Memorial Hospital at Gulfport and the Singing River Health System.
“I want to see this for myself, and I’m convinced that the time is now for us to be acting and doing whatever we can to get the virus behind us,” Gunn said.
Currently, more than 60 percent of Forrest General Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit capacity is occupied by COVID patients. The hospital offers a 50-bed ICU - one of the largest in the state - and only 14 beds are now available for other critical care issues, such as heart attacks, strokes, car wrecks and other types of trauma.
“We are doing all that we can,” said Dr. Steven Stogner, Forrest General Medical Director of Critical Care. “We need more nurses, more respiratory therapists.
“A room that we call an ICU room is not an Intensive Care Unit unless you have nurses and respiratory therapists who are highly trained in order to take care of these patients. I am blessed to be in a facility like this, that is dedicated to taking care of our community, our patients. It is an overwhelming job, but we’re going to make it.”
