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A University of Nebraska Medical Center doctor who helped form the state's COVID-19 response plan says Nebraska isn't doing enough testing.
Dr. James Lawler joined Gov. Pete Ricketts on a live town hall on NET Television Thursday.
The group discussed Nebraska’s status as one of a very few states without a stay-at-home order, which the governor said is partly due to a need for voluntary compliance.
Lawler said Nebraska’s response to COVID-19 is based on plans created in case of a flu pandemic in the mid 2000s and that it can be adjusted as needed.
“From what we’ve seen so far in terms of the numbers that we see, clearly what we did had an effect," Lawler said. "But as I’ve told the governor, the numbers that we can’t see sometimes are the ones that I’m concerned about. We don’t have enough testing to really have great visibility into community disease transmission and we need to work on improving that and we need to adjust our actions based on what we find.”
Lawler compared the fight against COVID-19 to a baseball game and estimated we are only in the bottom of the second inning. He said the fight will not be truly over until we have a vaccine against the virus. He explained that vaccine development often takes longer than the hoped-for 18 months.
Speaking of Nebraska: A COVID-19 Town Hall with Gov. Ricketts