Last week, the Mississippi Department of Health stated that data delays were caused by “legacy software problems impacting its ability create detailed reports.” It is “Epi-Tracks”, a public-health epidemiology tracking tool developed by Scientific Technologies Corporation in Phoenix. According to records from the state government, MSDH spent $33,675 on software enhancements in 2017. Hospitalization data was the only data that had been released since June 19, when new case numbers were issued by the Mississippi Department of Health. Although technical issues have caused delays in daily reports recently, the agency has not completely lost daily numbers since June 11, when it issued new case numbers for June 17. The delay caused hospitalizations in Mississippi to reach their highest levels ever reported. It ranked second in the U.S. in terms of per capita and per-case current hospitalizations. Monday’s WLBT report said that MSDH was in the process to replace the system after data delays were fixed. Since 2011, MSDH has spent $3.344,423 total on six contracts with Scientific Technologies Corporation, including a $1 Million renewal by request for proposals. MSDH has been through a series of budget cuts by the state legislature over the past decade that have resulted in flat funding for the agency since 2010. MSDH’s budget share grew to over $64 million in fiscal 2016, but was reduced by nearly 10 percent to $57 million two years later. It is now at $62 million for 2020, which is just below the 2010 level. The state health department released data for the last five days, despite the “legacy software problems” last week that prevented it from producing daily case counts or other data. Monday’s MSDH report showed that there were 1,646 new cases, 40 deaths and 43 new injuries for the period June 17-21. The agency has not reported daily case counts from June 18 to June 21. The agency did not update cases by county until June 16, which was the last day that they had done so. Mississippi has reached 392, which is the highest average rolling seven-day* number of new cases. This number peaked at 331 in June 12th, when it was 331 before Sunday. Mississippi’s hospitalization rates have risen to the top in the country, ranking second among all states on Sunday. The state’s hospitalization rate rose to third place on Monday thanks to new data. The 7-day rolling average of illness onset, the day that people report getting sick, reached 324 per day on May 29. The average daily test roll-over is 3,228, which is the same as last week. This number has fallen by 40% over the past two weeks. MSDH reported 17,242 recoveries as of Monday. This represents 77 percent of all cases. *Note: Mississippi Today evenly divided the new cases over four days to calculate daily averages and case counts. This excludes June 17, which MSDH provided a daily count for. This report was contributed by Alex Rozier.