April 19th COVID-19 Update

April 19, 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. 

Today’s newsletter is almost all about numbers.  Enjoy!  I’ll have more policy discussions for you tomorrow.

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).

• Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 66 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 1,910.
• Total Tests: Today’s reported testing numbers reflect an increase of 1,455 test results from yesterday, bringing the total test results so far to 39,038.
• Ratio:  Though the overall numbers are increasing, the percentage of positive results still remains just under 5%.  That’s much lower than the national average (still over 19%).
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report that the deaths of two more Oregonians were reported yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths in Oregon to 74.
• Hospitalized: The number of Oregonians who have been hospitalized with symptoms, and who have also tested positive for the disease, is now at 456. This is an increase of 7 from yesterday.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Available ICU Beds: 323 (an increase of 21 from yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 2,071 (a decrease of 35 from yesterday)
  • Patients Currently w CO VID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 278 (a decrease of 12 from yesterday). Of those, 125 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): 66 (8 fewer than yesterday)
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 37 (same as yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 795 (5 more than yesterday)
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 3,865,864 (up 175,382 from yesterday)
  • Positive Tests: 749,203 (up 28,456 from yesterday)
  • Deaths: 35,793 (up 1,654 from yesterday)
  • These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can follow their updated numbers for each, state and the nation as a whole here.
• PPE:
  • The Emergency Coordination Center received 73,760 N95 masks, 13,950 gowns, and 29,000 pairs of gloves in the last 24 hours.
• Other State Updates:
  • The majority of energy utility providers are curtailing certain non-safety activities, including non-emergency service calls, meter changes, meter relocates, public work, etc. to keep employees available to handle critical functions, safety calls, everything to keep services safe and operational. Non-essential employees are telecommuting when and where possible. PPE remains in short supply for utilities.
  • Small Business Development Centers are now working with over 415 firms who have suffered direct impact from COVID-19. If you’re having problems accessing benefits or just trying to figure out what your options are as a small business owner, I’d strongly suggest you get in touch with your local SBDC.  To find your local SBDC, here is that link again.
  • Business Oregon has established a Small Business Resource Navigator to assist with business questions and provide help accessing existing resources. So far this week, they’ve been contacted by 65 businesses (and only one in SD 23!). Please consider using this service.  They have staff available to respond to emails and calls Monday through Friday from 8 am – 5 pm via the resource hotline at 833-604-0880 or covid19@oregon.gov.

Another UI Error Message Hits, But It’s Now Fixed

You may have heard that a number of UI claimants doing their weekly filing were told this morning that they must restart their claim all over again.  That was an error, some kind of bug in the system.  It was apparently caught quickly and fixed.  If you know of anyone who was the victim of this error, please tell them they can and should refile.

Here’s the message that went out to legislators a few hours ago:

We know the re-start claim issue we saw last Sunday happened again this morning to many Oregonians claiming benefits. This issue has been fixed, and if they experienced the re-start claim error, they should be able to try again and successfully file their claim online now. Today (Sunday) alone, nearly 100,000 Oregonians have already successfully filed initial or weekly claims for benefits. That record level of online claim processing, paired with other weekend system maintenance, is what caused the re-start claim issue we saw last weekend to happen again. We care about everyone’s ability to successfully process their claims, and continue working hard to improve our systems, while also getting new benefit programs up and running. The Employment Department has been and will continue to post information about any claim issues and new updates on the Employment Department’s COVID-19 page.

As of just a few minutes ago, we’ve already seen at least 20,000 who received the re-start error this morning now successfully file their weekly claim. The fix is working.

Multnomah County Dashboard

As I’ve mentioned, the proportion of positive test results to overall test results in Oregon has remained quite stable (around 5%) for the last few weeks. That ratio varies by county, however. If you’re interested in seeing the numbers for the counties in the Portland Metro area, let me steer you again to the great COVID dashboard that Multnomah County has put together. If you click on “testing,” you’ll see how the ratio has changed over time in the Metro area.  But don’t stop there—there’s a wealth of information on the other tabs as well.

More Data: Interesting Tracking Info from an Independent Researcher

An independent researcher from Eugene, Brian Wanty, contacted me to share some interesting COVID-related data (infection rates and testing rates) that he’s been tracking at the state and county level. It’s showing trends that you may find interesting at both levels. He points us to a new website, R_t Covid-19 (created by the founders of Instagram).  It suggests that the rate of infection spread in Oregon is the 8^th lowest in the country.  Had we not committed to social distancing when we did, our infection rate would have been much higher.

He also points us to Google mobility tracking, which suggests that in general Oregonians are staying at or near their homes, though it does point out that the number of people congregating in parks is increasing.

Here is Mr. Wanty’s email. I appreciate his input.

Weekly Demographics by Age

Here again is a breakdown of positive test results, hospitalizations, and deaths by age.  You’ll see that the distributions remain similar to what they were for the prior two weeks. The overall number of deaths has increased from 52 to 72 this week. (Though still far too many, this increase of 42% in the last week is in fact a significant reduction of the previous week’s increase, which was 92.6%.). 

More Numbers

I’ve put together the following chart, showing the overall weekly sums of the Positive Tests (w All Tests added for perspective), Hospitalizations, and Deaths over the past two weeks.  You’ll see that the weekly rates of increase in Oregon continue to be high, but they are going down.

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:

• Here is the OHA’s coronavirus page, with links to a number of resources. 
• Oregon's Office of Emergency Management now has a website for information about COVID-19.
• You can sign up here for regular coronavirus updates from OHA.
• Multnomah County has an excellent website with lots of really important advice and guidance.
• Here’s one from the Governor’s Office
• The Employment Department has put together a webpage with Q&A’s on a number of employment issues related to COVID-19 (e.g., eligibility for Unemployment Insurance benefits).
• The Oregon Education Department has a new site for COVID-19 updates.

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