Nebraska's Governor is reinforcing his message from last week about taking COVID-19 mitigation efforts seriously.
On Monday, Ricketts doubled down on the measures the state is prepared to take if COVID-19 hospitalizations pass the 25% threshold. Last week, the governor shared a chart showing what restrictions will be put in place if Nebraska goes “into the red” in terms of hospital capacity.
The state is currently at 20%, but Ricketts said the first day capacity moves to 25% of staffed hospital beds filled with COVID-19 patients moves Nebraska into that restrictive scenario — and the state won’t move out of that designation until the 7-day rolling average falls below that percentage.
On Thursday, the state was reporting 905 COVID-19 hospitalizations. This morning, the Nebraska DHHS COVID-19 dashboard showed 914, which amounts to 20.4% of hospitalizations.
Ricketts has been attending his news conferences virtually as he and his wife are currently under quarantine since last week after they were notified someone they attended a dinner party with over the weekend had tested positive for COVID-19. The governor said Monday that he has since tested negative.