While much of the Mississippi seems to starting to see improvement, Lafayette County crossed the 1,000-mark in reported COVID-19 earlier this week.

The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 18 new cases in Lafayette County as of 6 p.m. on Thursday, bringing the total to 1,043 cases since March 19. Lafayette reached 1,000 cases on Wednesday after MSDH reported 31 new cases.

As of Aug. 13, Lafayette County had 130 active cases according to data on the City of Oxford’s website that is tracking COVID-19 cases.

Lafayette County’s death toll due to COVID-19 has risen sharply throughout late July and into August. As of Friday, MSDH reported one new death bringing the County’s total to 21 since March. Most of the deaths have been from the long-term care facilities, including the Mississippi Veterans Home in Oxford that has reported 13 since their outbreak last month.

Statewide, MSDH reported 944 new cases on Friday, bringing Mississippi’s total to 70,930 since reporting its first case on March 11. The statewide reported death total surpassed 2,000 this week, currently at 2,043.

Only one day since Monday did MSDH report over 1,000 new daily cases, with 1,081 reported on Wednesday. Outside of Friday’s total, every other day reported less than 700 new cases. During a video posted to his Facebook page on Thursday, Governor Tate Reeves noted 80 percent of Mississippi was seeing a decrease in case averages.

As of Aug. 9, there were a presumed 49,836 cases that have recovered in Mississippi.

The hospitalization numbers across the state began to slowly decline in some categories, including patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19. As of Aug. 12, there were 949 Mississippians hospitalized with confirmed cases, which was a drop of nearly 30 patients from the previous day. There were 318 patients in ICU and 195 on ventilators as of Wednesday.