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April 15, 2020
Dear Neighbors and Friends:
I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends.
Kiki and I each received our $1200 direct deposits today. It’s good to see that this part of the system seems to be working. Again, I would recommend that if you have not already given the IRS your bank information, you do so write away. As of today, their Get My Payment portal is up and running. You can go in and give them your bank info to get your direct deposit right away. If you wait for a check, you may be waiting a while.
For those of you, like me, fortunate enough not to have your immediate income substantially affected by the financial crisis, I’d ask that you consider donating some of your economic impact payment to an organization working directly with those who are most in need. You probably already have one or two in mind.
One that I’ll be donating to is the newly-created Worker Relief Fund, which has been set up by the good people at the MRG Foundation. It’s designed to provide support for those workers who cannot access federal benefits because of their immigration status. We’ve been relying on their labor for a long time, and their children are attending our schools, yet they and their families are among the Oregonians most in need at this time. Check it out.
Access to emergency food resources is of course incredibly important at this time for many Oregonians. For some, it is needed to tide them over until they finally receive their federal payments and state unemployment benefits. For others, being housebound makes it impossible for them to access the locations where they normally get food.
Likely candidates for your donations there would be the Oregon Food Bank and Oregon Meals On Wheels. To get a full sense of the need here in Oregon, I’d steer you to the Partnership for a Hunger-Free Oregon. They’ve got a very useful COVID-19 page.
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
***Please notice that I’m now using an exponential scale for the Y axis on this graph. Doing it this way allows for a more realistic sense of the upward curves of these three data points (positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths).
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Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 30 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 1,663.
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Total Tests: Today’s reported testing numbers reflect an increase of 988 test results from yesterday, bringing the total test results so far to 33,351.
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Ratio: Though the overall numbers are increasing, our ratio of positive results still remains right around 5%. That’s much lower than the national average (now over 20%).
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report that 3 additional Oregonians died from the disease yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths in Oregon to 58. More than half have been residents of senior care facilities.
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Hospitalized: The number of Oregonians who have been hospitalized with symptoms, and who have also tested positive for the disease, is now at 401. This is an increase of 20 from yesterday.
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Other Hospital Information:
- Available ICU Beds: 307 (a decrease of 21 from yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 2,254 (an increase of 120 from yesterday)
- Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 305 (a decrease of 6 from yesterday). Of those,140 have already received a positive test back.
- ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 95 (7 more than yesterday)
- COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 43 (a decrease of 1 from yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 794 (no change from yesterday)
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Today’s National Numbers:
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PPE: Nothing new to report.
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Other State Updates
- Stay tuned for a new executive order allowing local governments flexibility in their deadlines for finalizing local budgets. Should come out tonight or tomorrow. Local governments have been asking for this flexibility (and it was one of the recommendations coming from the Legislative Committee on Coronavirus Response) because there is a great deal of uncertainty around local revenues as a result of the financial crisis. Since there is also still a lot of uncertainty around the federal distributions coming to state and local governments, and because the state revenue forecast won’t be known until the end of May, they would like to see the timelines for budget approval extended. The Governor’s office has been working on implementing this legislative request for the last couple of weeks.
- We learned today that the federal government sent out just under $300 million last week to hospitals and health centers around the state to help them weather this crisis. The money went directly to the hospitals based on their Medicare Fee for Service claims for 2019. The state doesn’t yet have the per-hospital breakdown, but that should become available soon.
- We’ve learned that 9,508 individual Paycheck Protection Program loans to Oregon companies have been approved by the U.S. Small Business Administration so far. That’s for a total of $2.4 billion for businesses in this state.
- The people at the Emergency Coordination Center have revised the site for those interested in volunteering or donating. Link to the platform is https://oregonrecovers.communityos.org. A volunteers and donations email has been setup donations@state.or.us, and a phone line at #503-378-4479.
An Update from Oregon State University
I just got off of a video meeting with a few of my legislative colleagues and representatives from Oregon State University to learn how things are going there now that we’re into the third week of Pandemic Spring Quarter. We were able to meet with OSU President Ed Ray and several administrators, including VP Becky Johnson, who oversees the Cascades Campus in Bend.
We heard good news and bad news. On the positive side, 4,000 courses are being taught remotely this quarter. Faculty and TA’s had two weeks to make the adjustment, and they really came through. Enrollment has not suffered; in fact, overall enrollment for spring quarter is at a record high. Very impressive. (President Ray described it as “awe-inspiring.”) Even international student enrollment remains around 90%-95% of normal. On the non-credit front, 25,000 people are currently enrolled in online gardening classes.
So, lots of good news on the online front. But not having students on campus has had serious economic effects both on the university and on the local communities (Corvallis and Bend). Net revenues from the residence halls and food service is down around $14 million. Many millions have been lost in athletics revenues. Students who counted on employment by the college are out of work. Field work and most lab work has largely ceased. And you can imagine what the impact has been on local businesses that cater to students.
As I reported the other day, OSU’s share of CARES Act funding will be a little over $15.5 million. Of that, the university will be able to access $7.8 million to help make up its losses (though we haven’t yet received clear guidance from the U.S. Department of Education about how those dollars can be spent). The remaining $7.7 million will go to direct distributions to needy students. Of that amount, the first distribution will go to student workers who have lost their income. Then they will be looking at Pell Grant-eligible students (from families with modest incomes) to ascertain their needs. One of the open questions still is whether or not they can use those funds to help DACA students (those who were brought to this country as children and lack documentation).
The Board of Trustees voted to freeze tuition for next year out of a recognition that students and their families are in a precarious position. Student government leaders voted to reduce student fees for this quarter by around $50.
There is a great deal of uncertainty and concern about the future at this point. If the pandemic continues into the summer and fall, university leaders are projecting a definite falloff in enrollment. (Students are accepting the distance-learning environment in the short run but may want to wait for when they can return to face-to-face.) There is concern that international students will not return if the disease continues to plague the state. There is concern (which I’m afraid I can say is well-founded) that all universities will be facing budget cuts from the state if tax revenues decline significantly. We likely won’t have a better sense on all of these fronts for a couple of months yet.
But I will end on an intriguing and uplifting note. Not one to let a pandemic go to waste, several departments at the university are collaborating on an epidemiological study in Corvallis that will survey 960 randomly-selected residents for each of the next four weeks, getting a sense of their health and whether they’ve been ill, and testing them for COVID-19 (via a public-private partnership). The goal is to get a baseline sense of how a community is experiencing this illness, accounting for the social distancing restrictions that have been put in place. It may also continue beyond the time that restrictions are lifted to see the impact of that decision. I’m sure we’ll all be eager to see the results.
Want to See Past Newsletters?
If there was COVID-related information in a past newsletter that you want to go back to, but find you’ve deleted it, you can always go to my legislative website (www.senatordembrow.com), click on “News and Information,” and you’ll find them all there.
AND FINALLY,
Here again are some resources that you will find useful:
If the above links are not providing you with answers to your questions or directing you to the help that you need, please consider me and my office to be a resource. We’ll do our best to assist you or steer you in the right direction.
Best,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-986-1723
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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