Lafayette County reports new record high in COVID-19 cases

Published 2:29 pm Thursday, September 3, 2020

Mississippi may be seeing a slow decline in positive COVID-19 cases, but Lafayette County continues to report record numbers on a near-daily basis.

On Thursday, the Mississippi State Department of Health reported 67 new cases in Lafayette County as of 6 p.m. Wednesday. That sets a new record after previously reporting a new daily high in cases with 51 on Tuesday.

Lafayette County has a total of 1,590 cases since March 19 with 337 active as of Sept. 2. The county has also reported 38 deaths since March, with 27 of them being reported by long-term care facilities.

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There have been 123 long-term care facility cases since Lafayette County reported its first case in mid-March.

Thursday’s reported number of cases does not include cases on the University of Mississippi campus, unless those people have a registered address of residence within Lafayette County.

As of Thursday morning, there were 315 active cases at Ole Miss with 307 being students. There were seven active cases among campus staff and one active case among the faculty. There were 22 active outbreaks across campus with four campus programs being affected and 18 on-campus residence outbreaks. There were 49 people in quarantine and 33 more in isolation.

Over a seven-day period there have been 201 new cases reported by the University. The cases are from positive tests administered by the University Health center or by students who have self-reported their positive test from another clinic.