OMAHA- Dr. James Lawler, a UNMC pandemic expect is forecasting dark months ahead without more stringent public health measures or better compliance with what is already in place.
As he was looking at the outbreaks in New York, Belgium and Italy, he saw fatality rates at 1,000 per 1 million people. Based on that figure, Nebraska could see 1,900 deaths by the end of January. The warning came as the state set a new record of 1,605 cases on Thursday. On Friday, 528 Nebraskans were hospitalized with COVID-19, doubling the spring record of 232. While critical care teams have adapted to caring for COVID-19 patients the outcomes will worsen if hospital staff becomes overwhelmed with patients. Lawler says the number of critical care nurses to patients needs to be at a ratio of 1 to 3 at least.
Additionally officials from the state's largest hospital systems have altered operations to deal with the skyrocketing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. CHI Health, Methodist Health and Nebraska Medicine are in the process of reducing elective surgeries to free up bed space for COVID patients. This comes after Lincoln's Bryan Health said it was cutting back on 10% of elective surgeries that require overnight stays.
Nebraska has had the same amount of cases in the past seven days that it had in the entire month of August. At the beginning of the week, there were about 615 people hospitalized in the state. That is a 170% increase since the start of October. With the state's 637 deaths through the end of October, the mortality rate is at .93%. The flu, being the state's No. 8 cause of death, has a mortality rate of .1%. Lawler continued on by saying he is not asking for a complete lockdown, but if people in the state follow the rules that health officials are giving, the spreading will slow down.