Mississippi’s crushing number of new COVID-19 coronavirus cases reported Thursday will result in dozens of deaths and hundreds of new hospitalizations in the coming weeks, the state’s top doctor said.

Mississippi reported a record 4,412 new cases, shattering the previous record set in early January by more than 1,200 cases.

“What does that mean?” Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs asked Thursday at a news conference inside a parking garage being converted to handle hospital overflow. “It means we’re going to have about 93 more deaths, just for today.

“It means we’re going to see over 300 new hospitalizations, just from today,” he said. “And that’s on top of a system that is already overtaxed.”

Dobbs made the comments inside a parking garage at the University of Mississippi Medical Center where state and federal officials are opening a field hospital to help handle the overflow of COVID-19 patients.

“Let us be very clear that the vast majority of cases and hospitalization and deaths are unvaccinated,” Dobbs said. “Our death rates in seniors have plummetted. We have over 150 long-term care outbreaks, and we have a handful of deaths because most of them are vaccinated.”

Dobbs and other health care leaders continue to urge Mississippians who are not vaccinated to seek out advice from their local doctors and get any questions they have about the vaccines answered and ultimately become vaccinated.