As both COVID-19 case and hospitalization numbers rapidly rise, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs sent out a tweet on Monday, urging Mississippians to keep their Thanksgiving celebrations “small, local and outdoors.”
Record cases and progressing to record hospitalizations.
Please keep Thanksgiving small, local and outdoors. pic.twitter.com/3CGEoWhWvy
— thomas dobbs (@TCBPubHealth) November 22, 2020
In a recent radio interview, Dobbs went into further detail regarding why he is pleading with people to forego what their typical Thanksgiving might look like.
“I really hate that we’re having to have this conversation around Thanksgiving, because we have had such a hard year and we need a break and we want to be with our families,” the medical expert said. “But, if we think about how Thanksgiving works, we all get together with the ones that we love…We mix young folks with old folks, and that’s really going to be powder keg concern right there.”
While people within the 30-39 age group are still leading the state in most cases, individuals older than 65 have less than a one in ten shot of surviving if diagnosed with COVID-19, according to Dobbs.
“Of people diagnosed with COVID, if you’re older than 65, you have a 12 percent chance of dying based on historical trends,” he explained.
Currently, the entire country is in the midst of the worst surge of the virus since the onset of the pandemic. Just three days ago, the United States reported its one-day record of 192,805 cases.
For safety tips going into Thursday, click here.
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