Mississippi’s GOP Gov. Tate Reeves on Sunday defended his reconsideration of reopening his state, saying a spike in COVID-19 cases was a “blip” that reflected the number of coronavirus cases in a “data dump.”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Tate said the state is trying to be “very cautious.”
“We didn’t have time to analyze the data before we made the announcement,” he said.
Reeves was to proceed with his plan to get people back to work, but announced the change of plans on Friday as 397 new coronavirus cases were confirmed and 20 more people died.
“And so we said ‘let’s analyze the data over the weekend,’ and what we have found is it’s really a dump. We had a large number of tests that came in from out of state, private labs.”
Tate called the data “a one day blip.”
“But we wanted to make sure we investigate that data before we make a final decision, so we delayed it,” he said of the reopening.
Reeves says Mississippi is “doing everything in our power to get our, our state back open as soon as possible.”
“I think a fundamental right of our government is to be able to protest our leaders and, you know, most of the people that were protesting voted for me last year,” he said.
“We have a public health crisis in this country. There is no doubt about it, but we also have an economic crisis and so when I looked at those protesters I know they were protesting for the 200,000 Mississippians that have lost their job in the last six weeks."
“We have a long-term economic crisis; is going to be very difficult for this country. And I understand and I feel their pain,” he added.
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