Southern surge: Hospitals brace for wave of Covid cases not seen in months

Over the past three weeks, the state has grappled with a more than 200 percent rise in hospitalized Covid patients.Dobbs said Monday on the radio program "SuperTalk Mississippi" that nearly every new case of Covid can be attributed to the delta variant, and the state is reporting a threefold increase in the number of new cases over Friday through Sunday compared to the same period a week earlier, averaging about 800 new cases a day."It's all age groups, but we're seeing a lot of growth in children, teenagers and then young adults because summer's opened up, our vaccination rates, our immunity rates are really low in that group of folks," Dobbs said, adding his state has seen "a phenomenal surge of healthy and mostly healthy 40-year-old folks in ICU, on ventilators and dying."While only three Covid-related deaths were reported over three days last week, Dobbs said that he expected the number to increase as new data rolls in, and that more than 90 percent of those who died had not been vaccinated against the disease.Dobbs remained a vocal proponent of mask-wearing and avoiding social gatherings in his state even as Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, in early March ended pandemic-related restrictions after saying that "hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed."But this month, the Mississippi Department of Health announced new recommendations to help stave off the spread of the delta variant, calling for residents 65 and older to avoid indoor mass gatherings regardless of their vaccination status and for all residents 12 and older to receive a Covid vaccine.Mississippi's rate of fully vaccinated people is less than 34 percent — the lowest in the country besides Alabama, according to federal health data analyzed by NBC News.