Lancaster County's COVID-19 risk dial is moving deeper into the yellow as case counts continue to increase.
The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department announced Tuesday that the risk dial is moving from low- to mid-yellow. It's the second week in a row the risk dial has ticked up after it spent seven weeks in the green, or low-risk, range.
The Health Department said in a news release that a number of factors led to the change in the risk dial. Among them:
* Local cases have increased six consecutive weeks and totaled 397 last week, the most since the week ending Feb. 26.
* Wastewater analysis shows a substantial increase in COVID-19 virus particles compared with the previous two weeks.
* The local positivity rate is now 14%, which is up from 10.2% the previous week. A month ago, the rate was 3.3%.
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The good news is that there has yet to be any significant increase in the number of COVID-19 patients in Lincoln hospitals.
On Tuesday, Lincoln hospitals reported 25 COVID-19 patients, with 18 from Lancaster County. The Health Department said the rolling daily average of local COVID-19 patients is 22.
There also has not been an increase in deaths. There has been one COVID-19 death in May, reported Tuesday — a woman in her 90s who was vaccinated and not hospitalized — and there have been only five since the beginning of March.
“Cases increased again over the last week, but hospitalizations are holding steady. We continue to actively monitor the situation,” said Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez. “The pandemic is not done, although we wish it were. Please consider your own personal risk level and what actions you can take to minimize that risk.”
COVID-19 cases continue to increase across the state. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,500 new virus cases last week in Nebraska, a sharp increase from just more than 800 each of the two previous weeks.
It was Nebraska’s fifth straight weekly increase and put cases at their highest level since mid-February.
Hospitalizations in the state also are creeping up, averaging 69 last week compared with 55 the week before. But they remain relatively low, still half the levels they were just two months ago.
The state recorded 18 deaths last week.
Despite the surge in cases, the state has replaced its COVID-19 dashboard, which had been updated daily with case numbers and hospital data, with a Nebraska Respiratory Illness Dashboard, which provides information on COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. That dashboard will be updated weekly on Tuesdays, said Jeff Powell, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman.
The Omaha World-Herald contributed to this report.