With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise and local hospitals near capacity, officials see little choice but to extend Lancaster County’s mask mandate.
Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez announced Tuesday that the mandate, which requires masks in most indoor settings, will continue until Dec. 23. It had been scheduled to expire Wednesday.
The mandate, which was reinstated Aug. 26, has now been extended three times.
But Lopez also said that it is the department’s intention that this will be the last extension, unless conditions get drastically worse, such as “if our hospitals go into crisis standards of care.”
“Our plan is to focus on getting people vaccinated and not doing an extension. But if something happens that changes that, we will certainly make an announcement,” she said.
Lancaster County remains the only jurisdiction in Nebraska, and one of few in surrounding states, with a mask mandate in place.
The latest extension comes as the county is experiencing a COVID-19 surge that has case numbers near their highest levels in 10 months.
There were 957 cases reported in Lancaster County last week, a nearly 19% increase from the previous week, and the second-highest weekly total since late January. Over the past month, cases have risen nearly 90%.
The only week in the past 10 months when the county saw higher case totals was the week prior to Labor Day, which saw more than 1,000 cases after K-12 and university students went back to class.
Despite the big jump in cases last week, the county’s COVID-19 risk dial remained in the mid-orange range.
Lancaster County is not alone in seeing COVID-19 cases surge. Statewide, there were 6,103 cases for the week that ended Friday, according to case numbers reported on the state COVID-19 dashboard. That was up only slightly compared with the previous week, but it was up 10% from two weeks ago.