Nebraska Update

Repairs will begin soon on the gold-tiled Nebraska Capitol dome and other parts of the iconic building

Repairs will begin soon on the gold-tiled Nebraska Capitol dome and other parts of the iconic building

Last year, drug overdoses in Lincoln increased by more than 70 percent, compared to a five-year average. Already, more people have overdosed this year compared to last.

Pat Lopez is Director of the Lincoln-Lancaster Health Department and says her department is issuing a health alert because of the recent spike in overdoses.

Lucas Peterson lives in Lincoln. He’s a supervisor for the food and beverage department at Pinnacle Bank Arena. It’s a job that puts him in contact with people across the state. Lately, he’s been working concerts there and doing so at a greater risk than most people.

PETERSON 1: “In the beginning of the pandemic, I was calling my doctor pretty much every day at that point.” (0:06)

Peterson did that because he’s immunocompromised with an undetectable HIV status. He checks COVID trends regularly – through the county health department website and what’s in the Lincoln Journal Star.

As the Delta Variant has caused a new spike, he can’t check trends across the state anymore. That’s because the state removed its COVID dashboard at the end of June. In Lancaster county, where Peterson lives, there are local numbers released each week, but they’re an exception.

Other local health departments across Nebraska can only share county data for those with more than 20,000 people. That’s only 17 of the state’s 93 counties. But there’s some questions surrounding the state’s legal justification for withholding that information.

For Peterson, these decisions have consequences working at the Pinnacle Bank Arena. The venue hosts concerts, high school sports and graduations. Peterson says many guests come from across the state to these events. That worries him.

'Absolutely the right call': One UNL professor says he, other staff members feel relief in ability to require masks in classrooms ahead of fall semester

As the situation in Afghanistan continues to unfold, two Gold Star families with Nebraska connections say the exit from the country could have been handled a lot better.
Robert Allgaier’s brother Christopher was killed while piloting an Army helicopter that was shot down by the Taliban in the dangerous Helmand Province in 2007. They both grew-up in Omaha and he said what has unfolded over the past several weeks in Afghanistan is hard to watch.

The total death count in the state now stands at 2,302. It had been a while since Nebraska’s DHHS added more than a few deaths in a week.

The state also released “breakthrough” data for 2021. The results are as expected: Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are far greater among those not fully vaccinated. For example, there have been 17 deaths of fully vaccinated people in Nebraska this year – compared to 729 deaths from those not vaccinated.

Hospitalizations saw a big spike this week. 277 Nebraskans are now in a hospital bed, which is 60 more than last week. This puts the state where it was in early February – before vaccines were widely available

UNL’s new AD said the athletic department learned from the Garth Brooks concert over the weekend, but said it didn’t necessarily have to do with the future sale of alcohol inside Memorial Stadium for Husker game. Alberts said his department is close to selling out football tickets at Memorial Stadium.

The 2020 Presidential Elections may be over, but there’s still concerns about the voting results, like the GOP-led review of the 2020 general election in Arizona’s largest county. Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity company, is preparing its findings soon. But one of the largest voter technology manufacturers in the country said the elections were the most secure in history -- and they’re a Nebraska based company in Omaha.

The lightning-fast fall of Afghanistan back to Taliban control that culminated with the fall of Kabul (KAH-bull) over the weekend has come as a shock to Nebraskans who have spent time there. As Jack Williams of Nebraska Public Media News reports, the future of the country is murky and there are questions about how the U.S. let it happen.