COVID-19 “is probably the pandemic of our generation,” said Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III during a press conference Thursday afternoon at the William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Hattiesburg.
Dobbs, the state health officer for Mississippi, said 99.8 percent of people who get COVID-19 “will survive and be perfectly fine,” but there are concerns the virus will overwhelm the state’s health care system.
“We’ll have to learn how to navigate it through our health care system, and it’s going to be a challenge,” he said.
The State Department of Health – which Dobbs heads – has several objectives in place to contain the virus, including an attempt to slow it down through community mitigation efforts.
“We’re trying to put some blocks in front of (the virus),” he said.
Slowing the virus down will allow time for a vaccine “to be developed, maybe,” according to Dobbs, and it will also “spread out the demand” and reduce the stress on the hospital system. Slowdown efforts will also allow time for production to ramp up on critical elements, including personal protective equipment and masks for health care personnel.
“We need to keep our critical infrastructure strong – nurses, doctors,” he said. “We don’t need them on a 14-day quarantine.”
Dobbs said the state is also trying to keep COVID-19 away from vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those in nursing homes or corrections facilities.
The state health department issued a number of recommendations Thursday morning, including a restriction on visitation to long-term care facilities. Officials are also asking that mass gatherings with more than 250 people be canceled.
“It’s a personal decision, and individuals have to decide if they’re going to go somewhere,” said Dobbs. “However, people – especially people who are over 65 or have pre-existing conditions – should consider avoiding mass gatherings.”
Schools are also being asked to cancel mass gatherings, such as athletic events, but “we are not recommending school closures at this time,” he said. He added that the state health department is “supportive” of colleges and universities, such as the University of Southern Mississippi, transitioning to e-learning platforms for the rest of the semester.
He also encouraged parents to “have a back-up plan and be thinking about what you’re going to do” if the state finds it necessary to order school closures.
“When you cancel schools, there are a lot of ripple effects, like where are the kids going to go … what are the parents going to do … what will happen to businesses,” said Dobbs.
The state health officer is also anticipating a state of emergency declaration “in the next couple of days.”
“This will allow for an incident command structure and will allow us to coordinate a bunch of state agencies,” he said.
Under the incident command structure, Dobbs and Gregory S. Michel – the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency – would oversee the state’s COVID-19 response with different operational groups answering to them.
“Every agency will be in this and will have a role,” said Dobbs. “We will have a go-to team to coordinate partners so that we don’t have people duplicating efforts or having antagonistic functions.”
The command structure will also allow for better resource allocation and the ability to draw down federal resources as needed.
Dobbs urged the health care system to embrace testing and prepare for it as best they can.
“Any physician, any provider can order COVID-19 testing, but it doesn’t mean they will,” he said. “All they have to do is take a nose swab, throat swab and put it in a viral transport.”
Those swabs are transported to the state lab or to a private lab for testing. The turnaround time for results could be up to 48 hours, said Dobbs, but same-day results are available if the results arrive at the state lab before 1 p.m. on weekdays.
According to Dobbs, there are about 12,000 active medical providers in the state – and a lot of health care facilities don’t have the transport tubes in stock.
“They need to order them,” he said. “The clinical community is going to have to embrace this.”
Dobbs said Mississippi citizens should stay informed and make common sense decisions, especially when it comes to travel.
Information from the state health department will be posted to healthyms.com/covid19.
