A medical expert and member of the UNMC Global Center for Health Security is sounding the alarm about hospital capacity in the metro area.
Dr. James Lawler, who is also director of clinical and biodefense research at the National Strategic Research Institute, said Wednesday that unless drastic changes are made quickly, the Omaha area is less than two weeks from the point where hospitals will be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and are unable to provide appropriate care for patients coming into hospitals. “Within two weeks, our hospitals will be beyond full and to the point where we can no longer staff all of the beds that we need,” Lawler told 6 News.
According to the Douglas County Health Department on Wednesday, the entire Omaha-metro area is at 86% hospital capacity, leaving 215 medical and surgical beds available with 54 ICU beds available.
Lawler is calling for stricter non-pharmaceutical interventions, like face masks and social distancing, to control community transmission. Also, gatherings of more than 10 people should be banned, he said, and restaurants and bars should not be permitting indoor patrons. “At this point, we are getting to the place where we would just need to temporarily close schools to allow community transmission to subside,” he said.
Nebraska Medicine is already diverting transfer patients — something Lawler said he has never seen happen during his tenure there. “I don’t know where those patients are going to go because it’s not as if there are other tertiary care medical centers that aren’t busy in the region. They are all overwhelmed,” Lawler said.
“The reality of the hospital healthcare system being completely overwhelmed is beyond anything that we’ve seen," Lawler said. "I think the effects will be beyond anything that people expect or have seen. So it will be, unfortunately, truly devastating.”