princess cruise ship. clinicians there were among the first in the nation to develop their own in-house coronavirus test. and joining me now is infectious disease specialist dr. james lawler. he s the co-executive director of the global center for health security at the university of nebraska medical center. doctor, thank you so much for joining us here. so as i just mentioned, your hospital is widely considered one of the best-prepared hospitals to deal with covid in terms of pandemic-specific training and infectious disease equipment. so looking at what s happening in the uk now, record cases, the hospital system again under strain, how prepared are you for a possible huge surge due to the omicron variant? well, we re already experiencing a large surge with delta variant across nebraska and much of the midwest of the u.s. so we re not in a very good position to get additional patients either from omicron or from seasonal influenza, which
doctor, thank you very much for joining us here. so, as i just mentioned, your hospital is widely considered one of the best prepared hospitals to deal with covid in terms of, you know, pandemic-specific training and infectious disease equipment. so looking at what s happening in the uk now, record cases, the hospital system again under strain, how prepared are you for a possible huge surge due to the omicron variant? well, we re already experiencing a large surge with delta variant across nebraska and much of the midwest of the u.s. and so we re not in a very good position to get additional patients, either from omicron or from seasonal influenza, which we expect will be kicking up here very soon. we re already starting to see the first trends of flu season. so we re in a difficult position in our hospital to be able to absorb more patients and i know that we re looking at potentially a large surge of