Bryan Health at full capacity, advising new treatment for high-risk COVID-19 cases

From transferring patients to advising you to get your COVID 19 and flu shots, Bryan Health officials say they are at full capacity.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Serious news from Bryan Health Thursday. They say they’re at breaking point, full of patients in their hospitals.

From transferring patients to advising you to get your COVID 19 and flu shot, Bryan Health officials say they are at full capacity.

“At Brian, we’re at a physical limit,” said Bob Ravenscroft, vice president of advancement. “There are other places where there can be a little bit of physical capacity, but there isn’t, there isn’t staff for, you know, all staff, these facilities, and that. is, it’s, you know, sporadic all over the state. So, we are at the maximum as a health system. “

Bryan Health reports that they have reached their limit with 552 patients.

In total, 71 cases are covid patients and they have transferred some people to rural hospitals to maintain space for COVID-19 patients.

Dr Jim Nora is concerned at the onset of flu season the number could increase until some patients do not receive care.

“The next concern is whether we have to get into what’s called crisis capacity, where we have to make decisions that no one wants to make about triage of health resources,” Nora said.

Dr Nora says Bryan Health has been full for about four weeks. It’s just that they are at the point where there is no more room or staff to take care of the patients.

Although they believe some stabilization is occurring, authorities are still pushing you to get COVID-19 and flu shots to control the spread of viruses.

Now, new antibody therapy is being offered for some high-risk COVID-19 positive cases.

In fact, Bryan has set up a special space to give these treatments.

“In general, we would like to offer monoclonal antibodies to anyone who has had an illness that has occurred within the past 10 days and has significant risk factors for more serious illness,” said Dr Nora.

Risk factors include being overweight, pregnant and / or 18 years and older with risk factors.

Dr Nora strongly recommends antibody therapy for pregnant women with COVID-19 who have not been vaccinated. This investigational drug has been approved for emergency use by the FDA.

Bryan officials hope this treatment, along with more people vaccinated, will reduce the number of patients in hospitals.