JACKSON, Miss. — Four days before Christmas, Chiquikta Fountain watched as a growing line of cars stretched down a mile of road in the Mississippi Delta.
From her vantage point, it seemed like every resident in the rural town of Shaw was en route to the holiday meal giveaway at Delta Hands for Hope, a nonprofit she runs to support the area’s children.
The Dec. 21 event was meant to be a cheerful affair, despite the desperate need. Hams had been purchased from a mom-and-pop grocery store. There were bags of freshly picked greens, potatoes and onions for sides. With schools on winter break, volunteers tucked cereal and cases of orange juice into bags to help tide over families with children into the new year.
There were only 140 meals to distribute in the town of roughly 1,700. The meals were meant for a group of families and senior citizens who have relied heavily on the nonprofit for weekly assistance. But word spread quickly and it soon became clear that the food on hand wouldn’t be enough.
As supplies dwindled, the group began passing out the remnants. Produce for one person, a few boxes of cereal for another.
“To have to turn these families away,” Fountain said, “I can’t even describe what it felt like to you to do that.”
Before the pandemic, Bolivar County knew hunger. Almost 40 percent of its residents live in poverty. In areas like Shaw, trying to make ends meet has become even more fraught as the county struggles with the highest Covid-19 infection rate in the Mississippi Delta.
Weekly case counts in December have surpassed the peak of the county’s summer surge, when so many fell ill that the county coroner asked the board of supervisors to purchase an extra refrigerator for fear he would run out of space to store the dead.
That the recent surge has so far claimed fewer lives compared to previous peaks has left little room for comfort. Cases in the county quadrupled in the weeks after Thanksgiving.
Statewide, hospitalizations for patients with the virus spiked, plummeting the number of available intensive care unit beds in the state’s rural areas and larger cities alike. By the third week of December, Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland, the county’s only hospital, ran out of ICU beds, a situation that could recur as cases rise.