On the map, Douglas County is in red. Sarpy County, in yellow, is classified as having moderate transmission. Lancaster County, in orange, is considered to have significant transmission.

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said some counties and states now had 300 cases per 100,000 population, an “extraordinary amount”.

However, some of the high or high transmission counties in Nebraska may not actually have a large number of COVID cases. In counties with a smaller population, even a relatively small group of cases can skew the numbers. Prices may also fluctuate from week to week.

Dr Bob Rauner, president of Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln, said the organization is looking at numbers from the state’s multi-county public health districts to mitigate some of these variations.

Dr. James Lawler, co-executive director of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, acknowledged that there is some subtlety and nuance in establishing such metrics. But the lines the CDC drew, he said, are reasonable.

Cases statewide have increased in the past five weeks. On Wednesday, the state reported 1,406 more cases in the previous week, an average of about 200 new cases per day. From early to mid-June, the state recorded between 200 and 400 cases per week.