The Nebraska Hospital Association gathered three members from around the state to address the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 that is impacting their operations.
Association President Jeremy Nordquist stated it is important that Nebraskans know what is going on inside their hospitals. He says, “Our health care heroes are doing tremendous work trying to care for their fellow Nebraskans.”
Lori Mazanec is the CEO of Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance who says COVID-19 cases went from 291 the week of January 3rd to 562 January 12th. That is a 93% increase that shows how quickly the transmission can be. Mazanec says, “it does seem like there is about a 1 to 2 week lag from what is happening on the eastern side of the state right now so we expecting our numbers to continue to increase.”
In the Panhandle Public Health District area, 8 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on January 3rd with 3 in ICU. As of today, the total number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized comes to 16 with six in ICU.
CHI Health St. Francis in Grand Island President Ed Hannon says they are looking forward to the end of the pandemic. He says, “We known this is still largely a disease of the unvaccinated. Those who aren’t vaccinated or boostered, when they get this virus they get sicker and require hospitalization, ICU’s or on ventilators and we certainly don’t want to do that.” Hannon says about 25% of their beds currently are COVID-19 patients. About 70% to 75% of their patients who are hospitalized are not vaccinated. Those who are in our ICU’s and on ventilators, usually 90% to 95% were not vaccinated.
Hannon says while their health care workers are “super heroes”, they are also getting sick. Across CHI Health system, 400 of their 11,000 employees are out ill. He says no matter what the illness, St. Francis is there to help people with any health condition.
Bryan Health Vice President of Medical Affairs Dr. John Trapp says they continue to work their way through the pandemic. He says they had 543 hospitalized late Monday morning and that is significantly higher than normal. Over 100 are hospitalized with COVID-19.
Bed capacity is a critical issue. Trapp says, “As of an hour ago, we were holding about 20 in our emergency department looking for beds to get to the inpatient status. At the same time, our critical care access hospitals and other hospitals across Nebraska trying to find hospitals to transfer to so we had 19 on the wait list. A number of them are IC level patients simply not able to get transferred to our hospital or other hospitals for those specialty care needs. Some are COVID patients.”
Nordquist says all the physicians spoke of the importance of getting vaccinated. DHHS states you are 46 times less likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 if you have gotten your booster. He says it is never too late to take that step. He also encourages the 35% of Nebraskans not vaccinated to start down that path.