'Racing upward': Hospital leaders discuss recent COVID trends in Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. -- With COVID-19 rates and hospitalizations on the rise, the Nebraska Hospital Association addressed the current situation in the state on Monday.

"Our hospitals here in the Nebraska are facing one of the, if not the, most challenging times of the pandemic," said Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association. "COVID positivity rates are racing upward, and hospitalization rates are following, especially among the unvaccinated."

Nordquist said the numbers are stretching staffing thin, not just because of full beds, but also because of direct health impacts suffered by healthcare workers.

"It's putting many of our healthcare providers on the sidelines, either if it's themselves testing positive or if they have a family member that tests positive," Nordquist said.

In North Platte, where Great Plains Health Care CEO Ivan Mitchell says a quarter of its patients are Covid-positive, one of the primary difficulties is moving patients around for proper healthcare.

"The challenge we have is lot of the surrounding hospitals who are striving to transfer patients to a higher level of care are really struggling with that," Mitchell said.

Josie Abboud, president and CEO of Methodist and Methodist Women's Hospital in Omaha, said it's equally challenging for hospitals taking in new transfers.

"We aren't able to accept as many transfers as we have in the past," Abboud said. "It doesn't mean we don't accept any transfers, but when your day is filled with a lot of patients already in a bed, you really have to wait for when that next bed opens up. It depends on the moment. It depends on the time of day. I can't predict it for you, but it's when those calls come in that we're able to then make a decision on whether or not we can accept."

Todd Consbruck, president and CEO at Avera St. Anthony's in O'Neill, said he's seen the pandemic take its toll on people in more ways than one.

"The term that's been thrown out a lot is compassion fatigue," Consbruck said. "Nebraskans as a whole are a caring and compassionate group, but we are seeing segments of society right now that are not giving healthcare workers the respect and kindness that they deserve."

Consbruck said patients coming into the emergency room are seeing waits up to 10 hours to be served, something he said has historically been uncommon for hospitals in smaller communities.

The omicron variant spreads more easily than other coronavirus strains, and has already become dominant in many countries. It also more easily infects those who have been vaccinated or had previously been infected by prior versions of the virus.

However, early studies show that omicron is less likely to cause severe illness than the previous delta variant, and vaccination and a booster still offer strong protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Nordquist said vaccinations are important because people who are fully vaccinated with a booster are 36 times less likely to be hospitalized.

"We need to change this curve again now, or we are going to be in a lot of trouble a couple of weeks from now," Consbruck said.

The number of people hospitalized with the virus in the state hit 602 on Monday. That remains below the recent peak of 637 reached on Dec. 13, but it has been steadily increasing since Christmas Day. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Nebraska has soared over the past two weeks from 540 new cases per day on Dec. 25 to 3,152 new cases per day on Saturday.