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May 2, 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.
I’ll be including an additional graph each day, this one showing the percentage of positive test results on a daily basis. This is an indicator that the OHA will be watching closely. We are hoping to see a big increase in tests each day, but we definitely do not want to see an increase in the percentage of test results that are positive. As we increase testing and we reopen different industries, we’ll want to see that percentage hold steady, or even better, continue to reduce.
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
***Please notice that I’m using an exponential scale for the Y axis on this graph. Doing it this way allows me to keep all three in a single graph and allows for a more realistic sense of the upward curves of the three data points (positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths).
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Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 56 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 2,635.
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Total Tests: The total number of tests in Oregon now stands at 60,136. That’s an increase of 1,960 tests.
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Ratio: I’m going to start showing the percentage of tests that are positive for the virus each day, rather than the cumulative percentage, in order to get a clearer sense of the progression of the disease. The percentage of positive results for today is 2.9%. That remains much lower than the national percentage for today, which is 11.4%. See below for a graph showing the daily ratio changes over the last month.
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report that 5 more Oregonians have died from the disease. The total number of deaths in Oregon is now 109.
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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 595. This is an increase of 4 from yesterday.
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Other Hospital Information:
- Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 209 (an increase of 1 from yesterday). Of those, 98 have already received a positive test back.
- Available ICU Beds: 265 (an increase of 15 from yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 1,852 (a decrease of 16 from yesterday)
- ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 50 (1 more than yesterday)
- COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 22 (1 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 798 (1 more than yesterday)
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Today’s National Numbers:
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PPE:
- In the last 24 hours the Emergency Coordination Center received another 72,000 face shields.
Additional Daily Graphs:
 Update on Child Care Centers
Legislators had a briefing yesterday from the Early Learning Division’s childcare leaders. Their report focused on two areas: preparing for reopening and providing necessary support for centers that are reopening.
The childcare industry is one of the six industry areas that the Governor has asked to prepare reopening plans and guidelines. The Governor has recognized that having adequate access to childcare will be a priority for parents returning to work. But there are obviously going to be many challenges involved in doing childcare in a way that limits close contact and allows for ongoing sanitation. The guidelines will need to be clear, and providers will need help with implementing and sustaining them.
Providers have been surveyed for input on their needs, and more than two thousand surveys had been returned by the deadline yesterday. This input will be used to refine and finalize the industry guidances. Preliminary guideline drafts (apparently already outdated) have already begun to circulate among providers, with the goal of having recommendations in place next week or the week after.
Childcare centers that have remained open to provide care for the children of workers in essential industries have been subject to much higher expenses, and those will also apply to the additional centers resuming operation under Phase One. They won’t be able to have as many children, and they’ll need additional supplies and in certain cases additional staff. The federal CARES Act provided money to the states to help with these expenses. Oregon’s share has been $38.8 million. Some of this money ($8 million) is going out to supplement the income of providers who provided emergency childcare in April and had higher operating costs and lower revenues due to smaller class sizes and higher need for sanitation and necessary modifications to their facilities.
As of yesterday afternoon, the ELD had received more than 800 applications for funding, with another 800 applications pending. They are currently developing a plan for how and when to disburse the remaining $30 million in CARES funding. They may need it for to help other facilities reopen and it may need to last a while. Our federal delegation is pushing for additional dollars for child care in the next round of federal legislation, but obviously we don’t know how that will go.
I will say that there is a lot of concern about the future of child care in this state. In a research study done by PSU before this crisis, most of Oregon was deemed a “childcare desert.” We didn’t have enough licensed day care facilities to meet the need, and affordability was a real issue for many families. If we see much of a reduction in the number of centers as a result of the pandemic, we’re in real trouble.
Child care is another area in which the pandemic has revealed structural weaknesses in our state that somehow must be addressed going forward.
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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