March 17, 2021
Luisa Zaragoza is the artistic and managing director at Ballet Folklorico Ritmo Alegre in Medford. A project that started as a high school club in the '90s has grown into a dance academy for children and youth in the Medford area. Luisa, originally from Mexico, takes great pride in providing opportunities for cultural movement and expression for youth in her community.
Through the pandemic, Luisa has seen how fear and misinformation can impact the well-being of those around her. Especially since many families in her community don’t speak English or know where to get reliable information.
“There are resources out there, but if people don’t know how to access them, then we have a barrier,” Luisa says. She knew her relationship with families in the community was an opportunity to help.
Last year, Ballet Folklorico Ritmo Alegre partnered with the Oregon Health Authority and a couple of other local organizations to develop an education campaign providing information on COVID-19 and local resources through Facebook posts, phone calls, Zoom meetings and several drive-through events.
“For me, this is very important work,” Luisa says. “We get people with questions from things they hear on social media, and we are able to help them. They know we get information from reliable sources and see us following security measures as well, so they trust us. In a way, we are an intermediary, and they depend on us as much as we depend on them.”
As Oregon’s vaccination efforts are underway, Luisa has shifted some of her time to inform people on eligibility and vaccine locations. Meanwhile, she continues to offer folklorico dance classes to youth in her community and has even scheduled safely distanced performances at testing events.
“The kids need this too. They feel like they’re contributing, and it gives them a place to escape from the many challenges they’ve experienced through the pandemic.”
Learn more about Ballet Folklorico Ritmo Alegre and OHA’s statewide program working with community-based organizations.
 
Today, Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen shared that Oregon expects to get more COVID-19 doses from the federal government in the coming weeks. That means everyone 16 and older will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations by May 1. The state will continue to make equity the center of our vaccine distribution efforts, ensuring that seniors, people with underlying conditions, frontline workers, and the Oregonians most vulnerable to COVID-19 have the opportunity for vaccinations as soon as possible.
Not everyone is able to use the internet for vaccine scheduling. If you need to schedule your vaccination and you don’t have access to the internet, you can call 211. They can help you schedule.
Under the direction of Governor Kate Brown, outdoor capacity limits have been updated for outdoor recreation and fitness as well as outdoor entertainment for Oregon counties. As of March 17, all Oregon counties may allow the following:
- Lower risk: Maximum 50% occupancy
- Moderate risk: Maximum 25% occupancy
- High risk: Maximum 15% occupancy
- Extreme risk: Maximum 50 people
For updated outdoor capacity limits, please refer to the Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart.
OHA’s COVID-19 Weekly Report, released today, shows increased daily cases and declines in hospitalizations and deaths from the previous week.
- OHA reported 2,272 new daily cases of COVID-19 during the week of Monday, March 8 through Sunday, March 14 — a 31% increase from the previous week.
-
New COVID-19 related hospitalizations dropped to 130, down from 139 last week.
- Reported COVID-19 related deaths dropped to 26, down from 86 last week.
- There were 94,079 tests for COVID-19 for the week of March 7 through March 13 — a 27% drop from the previous week. The percentage of positive tests was sharply higher, at 3.6%.
- People 70 years of age and older have accounted for 40% of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and 77% of COVID-19 related deaths.
Today’s COVID-19 Weekly Outbreak Report shows 37 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 three new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 2,349.
OHA reported 239 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19, bringing the state total to 160,259.
Vaccinations in Oregon
Today, OHA reported that 15,289 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 7,849 doses were administered on March 16 and 7,440 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on March 16.
Today's vaccine totals are lower than usual due to an outage in the ALERT IIS system that affected several states. It is anticipated that the number of doses from March 15 and 16 will increase over the coming days as providers catch up on submitting data to ALERT IIS.
Oregon has now administered a cumulative total of 1,363,311 first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. To date, 1,777,145 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.
OHA provides downloadable vaccination data
OHA is now providing access to download the data that powers our vaccination dashboards as a CSV or Excel file. OHA currently posts summary tables for all existing COVID-19 case dashboards that are featured on weekdays, and OHA will now do the same for the vaccine dashboard.
The vaccine summary table is available here.
Cases and deaths
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (1), Benton (5), Clackamas (15), Clatsop (7), Columbia (2), Coos (10), Crook (1), Curry (1), Deschutes (7), Douglas (8), Grant (6), Jackson (25), Jefferson (2), Josephine (16), Klamath (2), Lane (16), Lincoln (3), Linn (6), Malheur (3), Marion (26), Morrow (1), Multnomah (24), Polk (1), Tillamook (3), Umatilla (13), Union (1), Washington (28), Wheeler (2) and Yamhill (4).
Oregon’s 2,347th COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on March 5 and died on March 14. Location of death is being confirmed. He had underlying conditions.
Oregon’s 2,348th COVID-19 death is an 89-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on Feb. 28 and died on March 13 at his residence. He had underlying conditions.
Oregon’s 2,349th COVID-19 death is a 90-year-old woman in Josephine County who tested positive on March 8 and died on March 16 at her residence. Presence of underlying conditions is being confirmed.
COVID-19 hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 108, which is 11 fewer than yesterday. There are 29 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is four 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.
Did someone forward this to you? You can subscribe here.
|
