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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
I hope to see you at my Tele-Town Hall with Representative Sollman and Senator Riley on Tuesday April 28th. We will be providing updates on the state and local response to COVID-19, and we will have staff from the Governor’s office on the call to give an overview of the Governor’s reopening framework. The Town Hall will be held on Zoom on Tuesday, April 28th from 6:30-8pm. RSVP and send questions to Linda.RayKeeney@oregonlegislature.gov by Monday (4/27) at 5pm to receive the link. Attendance will be limited to the first 100 participants. Please share questions ahead of time so we can have up-to-date and accurate information in time for the Town Hall. Hope to see you there!
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Executive Order on Non-Emergency Medical Procedures: Governor Brown announced that she is conditionally lifting her order that has prohibited health care providers from doing non-urgent procedures. Providers can resume services as long as they can demonstrate they have met new requirements for COVID-19 safety and preparedness. Hospitals, surgical centers, medical offices, and dental offices that meet those requirements will be able to resume non-urgent procedures on May 1.
- Medical providers will need to demonstrate they have the ability to:
- Minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission to patients and health care workers.
- Maintain adequate hospital capacity in the event of a surge in COVID-19 cases.
- Support the health care workforce in safely resuming activities.
- Under the guidelines, medical providers must also demonstrate that they have an adequate supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers. Hospitals must continue to report PPE supply levels daily to the Oregon Health Authority, and they must also demonstrate adequate coronavirus testing capacity when needed, including the ability to screen patients before non-urgent procedures.
- You can read the Governor’s full release here.
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Extending School Closure to June 30th: The Governor Officially extended the closure of k-12 schools through June 30th. Schools will continue to develop and implement their distance learning programs, along with delivering support services to students. You can read the full text of the order here.
- With schools closed for the rest of the school year, and with conversations beginning about what a safe reopening looks like without a vaccine, we need to consider how schools might operate once they reopen. Like in every other sector, reopening schools will not mean a return to business as usual, and we will need to find creative ways to keep our students and educators safe in the classroom. Check out this OPB story on what safe reopening of schools might look like.
- The Oregon Emergency Coordination Center has launched a new website to serve as a one-stop-shop for information about the response to COVID-19, including lots of great information broken down by county. Below is an example of the type of interactive graphs and reports available, click on the image below to view the page dedicated to PPE shipments.
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graphic on distribution of Masks to Washington County
*Please note that this is a new site, and the ECC is still working out some of the technical kinks, so please be patient and try to reload the site if you see glitches. I have found that the site loads best on Google Chrome than other browsers.
- National Numbers:
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Oregon Status Report: Oregon has 51 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Oregon, bringing our total number of confirmed cases to 2,177. Tragically we have had a total of 86 Oregonians die from COVID-19. Washington County still has one of the highest case counts at 451 confirmed cases. You can read more details about today's numbers here (note this directs you to a PDF of Oregon’s case counts and other data as of 4/24//2020). You can review on-going updates from OHA by clicking on the table below.
Click on the image above to view the Emergency Board website, watch yesterday’s meeting, and view materials.
The Joint Emergency Board met and allocated more than $30 million in emergency funding to support Oregonians in need of relief due to the coronavirus global pandemic. Here are highlights of the state funds the legislative committee appropriated:
- Safe Shelter and Rent Assistance - $12 million
- $3.5 million for safe shelter/social distancing alternatives for vulnerable populations, such as individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness and farmworkers.
- $8.5 million for rent assistance for individuals who have lost income due to the pandemic.
- Small Business Assistance - $10 million*
- Grants or loans through community lenders for small businesses with no more than 25 employees that are impacted by the pandemic restrictions and have not received support from the federal CARES Act. *The $10 million is made up of $5 million from the Emergency Fund matched with $5 million from existing funds in the Oregon Business Development Department.
- Oregon Worker Relief Fund - $10 million
- Community-based wage assistance program for laid off workers who do not qualify for unemployment benefits due to immigration status or other factors.
- Domestic Violence Housing Support - $2 million
- Emergency housing for victims of domestic and sexual violence.
- Long-Term Care Worker Training and Testing - $3.35 million
- Coronavirus training and testing resources for workers serving very vulnerable Oregonians. This allocation may be replaced by federal response dollars.
The limited funds available to the Emergency Board will compliment the federal relief assistance coming to our state. Workers, families and small businesses across the state are hurting, and it’s important that lawmakers do all we can to keep Oregonians from falling through the cracks amid the day-to-day uncertainty and fear this pandemic is causing.
As we move forward in addressing the fallout of this pandemic, it will be critically important to ensure our approach does not repeat mistakes from the Great Recession. We can’t leave people behind. We have to work towards a recovery that is equitable and lifts up as many people as possible.
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Thank you to all of the first-responders, doctors, nurses and essential workers who are on the front lines of our fight against COVID-19! We appreciate everything you do to keep us safe and healthy during these unprecedented times! |
Thank you to all of the teachers, grocery store workers, transit worker, utility workers and everyone else who are finding creative ways to do their jobs, and helping us keep our lives moving!
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 The Governor has begun to sync up her initial framework for reopening Oregon with the President’s guidelines for reopening America. Reopening is not a one-size-fits-all process, and every county and state will have different needs and expectations, but the Governor and President have come up with some general guidelines for beginning the process. First we need to make sure that we have had success with social distancing and have seen declines in cases, symptoms and hospital use. Then we need to ensure that our state and counties have the supplies and infrastructure necessary to reopen.
 Once these prerequisites are met, then we can begin a phased approach to reopening. These phases may be county-by-county, sector-by-sector, or a combination of the two, but the decision will be made by the Governor, in consultation with health experts, local leaders and other stakeholders. In order to reopen, regions and sectors will have to show that they have what they need to reopen safely and even in the latest phases of reopening, things will not look like our pre-virus normal.
Employers and Employees
Education Links
Local Government
Utilities Assistance
Food and Housing Assistance
View Past Updates, Share and Subscribe:
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 (http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/mclain), click on “News and Information,” and you’ll find them all there. You can also share this site with your friends and loved ones, so they can view past newsletters, and subscribe to future updates.
I am grateful for these friends and local leaders! Stephanie Hibbs from Washington County Library Cooperative, and Former Mayor of Cornelius Ralph Brown.
Yours truly,
 Representative Susan McLain
House District 29
email: Rep.SusanMcLain@oregonlegislature.gov I phone: 503-986-1429
address: 900 Court St NE, H-376, Salem, OR 97301
website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/mclain
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