{"id":116080,"date":"2021-12-06T12:37:09","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T18:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=116080"},"modified":"2021-12-06T12:37:15","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T18:37:15","slug":"first-covid-19-omicron-case-in-mississippi-reported-in-fully-vaccinated-individual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/first-covid-19-omicron-case-in-mississippi-reported-in-fully-vaccinated-individual\/","title":{"rendered":"First COVID-19 Omicron Case in Mississippi Reported in Fully Vaccinated Individual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today the <strong>Mississippi State Department of Health<\/strong> (MSDH) reports the first case of the <strong>COVID-19<\/strong> <strong>Omicron <\/strong>variant in the state. The case is in a fully vaccinated individual who recently traveled to New York. The patient was not hospitalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mississippi <\/strong>joins 16 other states (<strong>California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah<\/strong>, and <strong>Washington<\/strong>) in the U.S. that have reported cases of Omicron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe were prepared for the appearance of this variant in Mississippi, and we need to remember that Delta is still a very active variant of COVID-19 currently in the state, as well,\u201d said MSDH State Health Officer Dr. <strong>Thomas Dobbs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While information on the infection rate and severity of the Omicron variant is still unknown, Dobbs said the best protection at this point is the COVID-19 vaccinations and booster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cVaccines remain the best public health measure to protect people from COVID-19, slow the transmission rate, and reduce the likelihood of new variants emerging. COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations, and death,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MSDH is also experiencing a minimal increase in the number of COVID patients in the hospital and a minimal increase of COVID patients in the ICU and on ventilators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vaccinations for all Mississippians 5 and older can be found from healthcare providers, FQHCs, independent and retail pharmacies, and county health departments. Appointments at county health departments can be scheduled online at\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/covidvaccine.umc.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">covidvaccine.umc.edu<\/a>, or by calling the COVID-19 hotline at 866-498-4948 from 7 am to 7 pm seven days a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14544\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) reports the first case of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":116081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16346],"tags":[16052,5,16144,20055,16472],"class_list":["post-116080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","tag-covid-19","tag-mississippi","tag-mississippi-state-department-of-health","tag-omicron","tag-thomas-dobbs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/COVID-19-Omicron.jpg?fit=929%2C523&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}