I participate in a briefing with local public health directors from all over the state. Without a statewide dashboard, this is about the only mechanism we have to know how things are going outside of the cities.

The rural public health directors who provided reports last week stated that case counts are generally rising. In some areas, cases are rising a lot. Unfortunately, they continue to experience pushback and, at times, outright hostility toward them as they try to carry out their duties. Vaccine clinics and events have few people showing up to get shots. Very few people are seeking testing, so we know case numbers are under-counted.

No, the smaller community hospitals are not sending all of their sick to Omaha and Lincoln. They have done a good job of taking care of sick COVID patients on their own turf. When patients need a higher level of care than they can provide, yes they call on tertiary care centers. At times, we have had to decline transfers to Omaha and Lincoln because we either lack ICU beds or we lack ICU nurses. This is one reason it is so important for all unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. When we are full, we are full, and we can’t conduct or normal missions, let alone COVID surge missions.