NE & OK Apply the PREP Act

Ramaekers v. Creighton Univ., 320 Neb. 478, 496, 28 N.W.3d 57, 71 (2025) (holding that students’ negligence claims challenging the university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate were preempted by the PREP Act; “Administering a vaccine intended to help prevent or slow the spread of an illness, in this case COVID-19, is plainly within the statutory definition of a covered countermeasure.”). 

Franklin v. OU Med., Inc., 2025 OK 84, ¶¶ 3, 28, 48, 582 P.3d 1127, 1131, 1135, 1138 (2025) (holding that PREP Act immunity extended to a nurse at Oklahoma University Medical Center who was cleaning a patient when the patient’s tracheostomy was dislodged for several minutes, causing a brain injury. The court held a cuffed tracheostomy was a “covered countermeasure.” More controversially, the court held that defendants were administering a countermeasure when the cleaning of the patient dislodged the tracheostomy.).