Mississippi has already quarantined 15 percent of its K-12 students due to COVID-19 exposure

Schools in Mississippi have been open for less than a month -- and 15 percent of all students enrolled in K-through-12 education have already been quarantined due to exposure to the novel coronavirus.

The Mississippi Free Press reports that more than 65,000 Mississippi students have been told to isolate after being exposed to COVID-19, and the state has recorded a total of more than 11,000 COVID-19 cases in students since the start of the school year.

Additionally, the schools have recorded 2,383 cases among school staff members so far this year, more than seven times the number recorded among staff members at this point in the school year in 2020.

Mississippi saw a big surge in COVID-19 cases over the summer as the delta variant of the virus emerged as the dominant strain throughout the United States.

Even as cases surged, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves refused to issue new mask mandates for students or vaccine mandates for teachers.

During a press conference earlier this week, Reeves dismissed the idea that schools were acting as super-spreading centers for the virus.

"I don't think that you can necessarily make the leap from those individuals testing positive to the transmission occurring in schools," he said, according to Mississippi Free Press. "Some of it most likely occurred in schools, some of it most likely occurred in the community, and so I think it's important that we make sure we don't jump to irresponsible conclusions without having the data to verify that."