Total deaths in Mississippi (including those from the COVID-19 pandemic) decreased from 2020 to 2021, but ones related to the COVID-19 pandemic increased during that same time.
The Mississippi Department of Health charted 5,499 COVID-19 deaths where the virus was a contributing cause and 4,759 with the virus as an underlying cause.
In 2020, there were 5,044 deaths where COVID-19 was a contributing factor. The state also lists 4,472 underlying cause COVID-19 deaths.
Total deaths in the state increased 20.9 percent in 2021 over an average from 2017 to 2019 and 19.09 percent in 2020 as compared to the same average.
This was despite a small decrease (4.17 percent) in the total number of deaths from 40,204 in 2020 to 38,526 in 2021.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said that reason for the uptick in COVID-related deaths between the first year of the pandemic and the second is simple: The unvaccinated.
“We certainly know for a lot of history that Delta (the strain) is a bad actor. And you know there’s still some debate out there about the severity of illness and stuff, but you talk to the doctors and everything they’ll tell you, it was really bad,” Dobbs said during a Mississippi Department of Health press availability via Zoom. “The Delta surge was primarily folks who were not immune because they haven’t been vaccinated.”
The Omicron strain, which MSDH says case counts are rapidly rising in Mississippi, now accounts for 73 percent of COVID cases in Mississippi, according to Dr. Paul Byers, the state epidemiologist.
The good news is that the number of deaths due to the new strain isn’t as many as in previous waves, but it is far easier transmitted than previous iterations of the virus.
Speaking of COVID-19 related deaths, the provisional data from MSDH and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control differs by only 24 deaths, a figure that can fluctuate.
The provisional number of deaths over the last two years due to COVID-19 according to the state Department of Health was 10,527, while the CDC recorded 10,503 deaths from the virus.
There are differences in the way that the data is recorded. The CDC uses mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System while the MSDH uses provisional data from death certificate data.
There are also differences in the numbers when it comes to the CDC. While the CDC has recorded 10,503 COVID-related deaths in Mississippi, another data set recorded 10,958 deaths related to the Coronavirus.
Dr. Byers told the Northside Sun that data from the MSDH for COVID-associated deaths will be the most accurate and that it is updated frequently as additional reports and information become available.
“That appears to be data from what is listed on death certificates only and doesn’t reflect the review done by Epidemiology around these reports to determine whether the death was COVID-19 associated, Byers said. “Additionally, there are delays in death certificate reporting. All data reported is provisional and includes multiple different data sources and does not rely solely on vital records data.”
The CDC has provisionally recorded 5,155 deaths in Mississippi in 2020 where COVID-19 was involved (which could include a person who died of another cause of death tested and positive for the virus). Those numbers increased to 5,786 in 2021.
The CDC recorded 39,309 deaths from all causes in the Magnolia State in 2020 (deaths were up 24 percent from predictions). That number decreased slightly to 39,186 in 2021.
There were 5,075 deaths involving pneumonia and 2,701 of those involved both pneumonia and COVID-19 in 2020. Pneumonia-related deaths increased to 5,323 in 2021, with 3,205 of those with both pneumonia and COVID-19.
Influenza deaths were down to 71 in 2020 in Mississippi and dropped even further to 31 in 2021, according to the CDC. The combined number of deaths involving pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 increased from 7,592 in 2020 to 7,908 in 2021.
