More than 20,000 students in Mississippi were quarantined due to coronavirus exposures over the past week, according to Mississippi state health department data released Tuesday. Nearly 6,000 have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past two weeks, and two have died. The state health department reported only 199 at the same point in August 2020, compared with this year’s 5,993. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opposes mask mandates in schools. The University of Mississippi Medical Center cast the spike in dire terms in a press release on the same day: “In the 2020 version of COVID-19, most children infected did not show symptoms that developed into serious health conditions. That’s not the case today, as nationally and in Mississippi, the Delta variant of COVID-19 is driving up the number of children hospitalized at Children’s of Mississippi.”