Governor says hospital system 'stretched to the point of pain'

Tate reeves... and health experts expressed concern today over this week's spike in hospitalizations because of the coronavirus.

He spoke about mississippi's situation at this afternoon's news conference... wtva's alyssa martin said experts are worried that resources may be stretched too thin.

Tanya... mississippi is seeing record numbers for hospitalizations..

.

Today governor... tate reeves announced the patient count state wide jumped over 55-percent since the first of the month... " our hospital system is stretched, to the point of pain..."

Butted sot " we've added over 340 patients (in hospitals) in less than 3 weeks, in less than 20 days."

Reeves said about 40- percent of all i-c-u patients in mississippi have coronavirus..

The state health department confirmed mississippi has averaged about 15-hundred cases each day this week.

Reeves said the numbers need to come down... before the state is out of beds.

On monday, reeves extended an executive order requiring masks in public in 23 mississippi counties through august 3rd.... as an effort to bring down those numbers as we take a closer look at the increase of hospitalizations across the stated.

As you can see behind me, this is the latest graph reported by the state as of tuesday.

The red line in the graph showed there are 942 people in the hospital with confirmed coronavirus.

Of which 138 are on ventilators fighting the virus.

That's the blue line at the bottom of your screen.

The amount of hospital beds went down by 218 according to the state's latest report.

Right now there are only 2- thousand-21 beds available.

You may think that's a lot but it isn't especially when you factor in the number of people living in mississippi more; than three thousand people are in the hospital for non-coronavirus related illnesses while again 942 people are fighting the virus.