Feb. 24, 2021
There is a lot of uncertainty about school right now. Many students are in virtual school. But in January, some students began returning to the classroom, and more will as we move into spring. One thing is clear: Kids will be wearing masks at school.
Oregon pediatricians at the Oregon Pediatric Society offer advice for parents on helping kids with mask wearing. Here are five tips that may help accustom toddlers and children to masking up:
Start early: If you can, introduce masks well ahead of when you think your child will be required to wear them. Consider starting by simply having masks around the home and pointing out their presence. Next steps can be encouraging children to touch, explore and play with the masks.
Make it familiar: Parents and older siblings can wear masks around the house or put them on stuffed animals and dolls to make them more familiar.
Make it fun: Provide masks with fun patterns or pictures and let your child choose the mask they wear before going out.
Be honest: Even for young children you can say something like “OK, time to put our mask on to make sure we all stay safe.”
Be consistent: Once a child is comfortable wearing a mask, it is important to be consistent with where and when masks are worn. Consistency is the key to habit forming behaviors. One easy place to start is everywhere outside the home (“Whenever we go somewhere that is not our home, we wear a mask”).
The complete article is on the Oregon Pediatric Society webpage. They also have a great video on kids masking up:
 
We want to make sure that you are informed about what the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are — and aren’t — capable of.
What exactly is an mRNA vaccine and what sort of effects does it produce in a vaccine recipient?
For starters, these vaccines teach our immune systems how to make a harmless protein that is unique to the virus and provides our bodies with the means to fight the virus that causes COVID-19.
The large-scale clinical trials revealed that the vaccine prevents serious COVID-19 illness about 95% of the time. Every day, we are learning more about whether the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission. As we all know by now, it is going to take some time for everyone to get vaccinated. We don’t yet know when we’ll be able to stop wearing masks and maintaining physical distance, but OHA will continue to watch the spread of the disease in Oregon. When the spread of the disease is low enough, we’ll see some changes to these protective measures.
To learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine situation in Oregon, visit our webpage (English and Spanish), which has a breakdown of distribution and other useful information.
Did you lose food purchased with SNAP benefits due to storms, flooding, power outages or fires? You may be able to replace your SNAP benefits.
Deadline to apply: March 5, 2021
SNAP recipients living in one of the nine counties below who experienced food loss or had to destroy food due to the recent power outages can apply for replacement food benefits. Replacement benefits are available for regular and emergency SNAP allotments.
Counties with an extended food replacement deadline:
- Benton
- Clackamas
- Hood River
- Linn
- Marion
- Multnomah
- Polk
- Yamhill
- Washington
Request replacement by phone at 800-699-9075 or email at SSP.StatewideWorkshare@dhsoha.state.or.us.
OHA has added a new dashboard tool showing sites verified by the Oregon Immunization Program to receive and administer COVID-19 vaccines.
Being displayed on this dashboard does not mean sites have received COVID-19 vaccine doses, are administering COVID-19 vaccines onsite or have COVID-19 vaccines in their inventory. The new dashboard tool shows progress in enrolling potential COVID-19 vaccine providers across the state.
The tool is not meant to be used for scheduling. Go to the COVID-19 vaccine webpage to learn more about vaccinations, to sign up for eligibility notifications and to find vaccination providers in your county.
The Oregon Health Authority’s COVID-19 Weekly Report, released today, shows sharp decreases in daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the previous week.
- OHA reported 2,260 new daily cases of COVID-19 during the week of Monday, Feb. 15 through Sunday, Feb. 21 — a 35% decrease from last week.
- New COVID-19 related hospitalizations fell 42%, dropping from 272 to 159.
- COVID-19 related deaths also decreased from 114 to 17, which represents the lowest weekly death toll since the week of June 29–July 5.
- There were 70,200 tests for COVID-19 for the week of Feb. 14 through Feb. 20, which represents a steep decline from the previous week. The percentage of positive tests was 3.5%.
- People age 70 and older have accounted for 77% of deaths associated with the virus.
Today’s COVID-19 Weekly Outbreak Report shows 74 active COVID-19 outbreaks in senior living communities and congregate living settings, with three or more confirmed cases and one or more COVID-19 related deaths.
There are 32 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 2,194, the Oregon Health Authority reported at 12:01 a.m. today.
Oregon Health Authority reported 437 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, bringing the state total to 154,062.
Vaccinations in Oregon
Today, OHA reported that 22,406 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 14,502 doses were administered on Feb. 23 and 7,904 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on Feb. 23.
Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize because providers have 72 hours to report doses administered and technical challenges have caused many providers to lag in their reporting. OHA has been providing technical support to vaccination sites to improve the timeliness of their data entry into the state’s ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).
Oregon has now administered a cumulative total of 858,481 first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. To date, 1,133,695 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
These data are preliminary and subject to change. OHA's dashboards provide regularly updated vaccination data, and Oregon’s dashboard has been updated today.
Cases and deaths
Details on today’s reported deaths will be published later.
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (6), Benton (22), Clackamas (38), Clatsop (6), Columbia (10), Coos (16), Crook (8), Curry (1), Deschutes (28), Douglas (28), Jackson (27), Jefferson (7), Josephine (20), Klamath (4), Lane (33), Lincoln (2), Linn (6), Malheur (3), Marion (33), Morrow (5), Multnomah (55), Polk (11), Sherman (1), Tillamook (3), Umatilla (15), Union (1), Wasco (1), Washington (41) and Yamhill (6).
NOTE: Details from today’s reported deaths are being reviewed and will be posted in an updated version of this press release.
COVID-19 hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 162, which is three fewer than yesterday. There are 46 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is two more than yesterday.
The total number of patients in hospital beds may fluctuate between report times. The numbers do not reflect admissions per day, nor the length of hospital stay. Staffing limitations are not captured in this data and may further limit bed capacity.
More information about hospital capacity can be found here.
Learn more about COVID-19 vaccinations
To learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine situation in Oregon, visit our webpage (English or Spanish), which has a breakdown of distribution and other information.
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