LINCOLN - At the end of a news conference that highlighted the importance of data reporting availability to Nebraska’s COVID-19 response, Gov. Pete Ricketts defended the state’s decision to scale back its COVID-19 dashboard.

“That really just reflects the needs right now that we have here in the state. So we are looking to get back to normal, folks, right?” he said.

Ricketts said daily data updates are unnecessary and providing that information on a weekly basis is “sufficient.”

“There is nobody who is planning their staff on a daily basis. Right? Nobody needs daily information to do staffing,” he said, stating that staffing occurs on a week-to-week basis. “People want to know a week ahead of time when they’re going to be working.” Ricketts emphasized the decrease of the state's hospital staffing emergency and the increase of hospital capacity in his justification for the shift.

Hospital capacity is also what the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services emphasized in their latest dashboard release. Hospital capacity falling below 10% triggers Directed Health Measures, and the reappearance of the dashboard, until capacity increases above 10%.

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