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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
This newsletter contains a lot of important updates, and I hope many of you will read all the way through. However, if you are pressed for time and want to skip to the info that is most relevant to you, here is a preview of what you’ll find:
- Unemployment Insurance Updates on Applications for independent contractors, gig-workers, and self employed individuals.
- Updates on guidance for resuming non-emergency medical procedures in Oregon
- Revenue Department fix to the Corporate Activities Tax to provide more flexibility to Oregon’s Small businesses
- COVID-19 in Congregate Care facilities and how we are responding
- Elevated rates of COVID-19 in LatinX communities, and resources available to help.
- OHSU’s upcoming study on COVID-19 in Oregon, what it is and why it matters.
- Supporting local restaurants through COVID-19 crisis
On this May Day, we must stand in solidarity with workers on the front line of this global pandemic. For all the health care workers, truck drivers, grocery store workers, farmworkers, restaurant workers, bus drivers and countless others who are keeping our state running during this difficult time we say: thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Next week is also educator appreciation week. Our school workers are going above and beyond to support our students and families in this crisis. Share your support with our teachers, aides, classified employees and administrators!
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- Oregon is set to receive 2,160 more Abbott Rapid Test cartridges, which will allow us to distribute 11 more Abbot testing machines to hospitals across Oregon. Distribution is being prioritized based on these criteria:
- Areas of the state with no access to COVID-19 testing.
- Areas of the state with a limited number of first responders.
- Areas of the state where courier services for the state public health lab and commercial labs are limited or unavailable.
- Areas with a high population of older adults and other at-risk groups.
- Areas where hospitals or clinics do not already have access to an Abbott ID NOW instrument.
- Governor Brown has released a new contact tracing and testing plan. Testing and Tracing are two foundational elements of her framework for reopening Oregon safely. Ensuring adequate testing capacity and contact tracing will allow Oregon’s health care system to effectively identify and treat new cases of COVID-19, trace contacts with new cases to identify those at risk for infection, and contain new outbreaks before community spread can occur. You can read more here. Key elements of the testing plan include:
- Voluntary, widespread testing in partnership with OHSU
- Unified coordination between all hospital labs to optimize Oregon’s available testing capacity, acting as one statewide system which will allocate resources to meet the state’s testing needs in every region
- A focus on collecting data to serve at-risk communities
- As a part of the testing and tracing plan, Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) will be conducting a statewide study on COVID-19 to give the state more accurate information about our infection rate. This will help us make data driven decisions as we move through the phases of reopening and face more COVID-19 decisions. Learn more here. Participants in the study will:
- Be selected at random to represent the state’s ethnic, socioeconomic and geographically diverse population.
- Receive an invitation to enroll, via U.S. mail, starting the week of May 11.
- Monitor their temperature and other symptoms every day over 12 months using state-of-the-art technology, such as Kinsa smart thermometers, to collect real-time data.
- If they show symptoms, they will receive a home test kit. This will enable them to detect the virus at its earliest stage so they can better protect themselves, their family and the community.
- Be referred to the Oregon Health Authority for follow-up and appropriate action as needed.
- If you receive an invitation to enroll, please enroll if you can, this data will be incredibly valuable to our state, and will help our state make data driven decisions as we move forward through this crisis.
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Corporate Activities Tax (CAT) Update: The Oregon Department of Revenue filed a new rule on Monday to provide additional flexibility for small businesses subject to the corporate activity tax (CAT). Under the new rule, businesses subject to the CAT but owing less than $10,000 will not have to make quarterly estimated payments and will not have their CAT payment due until April 15, 2021. The previous threshold was $5,000. Learn more here.
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Care Facility Data: OHA publishes data on cases and deaths in care facilities, senior living communities, and congregate living settings that have three or more confirmed COVID-19 cases or one or more death. Facilities with outbreaks that are considered closed will be removed from this list. An outbreak is considered closed if there are no new cases identified for 28 days after the last case recovers. This list does not include correctional facilities.
- National Numbers:
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Oregon Status Report: Oregon has 69 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 today, bringing our total number of confirmed cases to 2,579. Tragically we have had a total of 104 Oregonians die from COVID-19. Washington County still has one of the highest case counts at 491 confirmed cases, and 11 of our neighbors have died from COVID-19. 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 5/1//2020). You can review on-going updates from OHA by clicking on the table below.
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As you can see in the table above our LatinX community is making up a disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases. This may be due to undue burdens that LatinX individuals face in accessing services, making pre-existing health inequities even worse. In Washington County there are a few different Organizations providing targeted supports to our LatinX friends and neighbors:
Both Veterinary and Human Medical Providers can now resume non-emergency procedures if they can meet certain criteria. You can find the guidance below.
Earlier this week, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program opened and is now accepting applications. Self-employed, contract, and gig workers not eligible for regular unemployment benefits who are filing for the first time should use the instructions and initial application form here on the top of the CARES Act Page, (see yellow buttons for English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Russian languages) to complete their first claim. The CARES Act Page also has links to instructions on how to file an application, FAQs, and information about the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC for the 13-week extension) and the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC, for the $600 weekly ‘”pay up”).
For self-employed, contract, and gig workers who have already filed initial and weekly claims and have an established PIN, they should complete the PUA application and certification process at http://workinginoregon.org/pua/en/ (English) or http://workinginoregon.org/pua/sp/ (Spanish).
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.
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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