May 19th COVID-19 Update

Michael Dembrow

May 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.

In today’s newsletter you’ll read about the fate of another COVID-related lawsuit directed at the Governor, the latest (awful) employment numbers, the plans that colleges and universities will need to make if they want to reopen in the fall, and the steps that Tri-Met is taking to prepare for the Metro-area’s reopening.

Tomorrow I’ll report on the quarterly revenue forecast that will be received by joint House and Senate revenue committees.  If you can’t wait, you can watch the Revenue Forecast at 9am either on the House Committee Page, or Senate Committee Page (click the camera icon next to the date).  You’ll also find the forecast documents themselves under “Meeting Materials.”

And now I’m off to watch the Election Night returns.  Hope you got your ballot in!

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TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 32 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 3,636.
  • Total Tests: The total number of tests in Oregon now stands at 99,630. That’s an increase of 2,398 tests.
  • Ratio: The percentage of positive results for today is 1.3%. Today’s national percentage is 5.3%.  See below for a graph showing Oregon’s daily percentage changes over the last 14 days.
  • Deaths: I’m afraid that I must report 2 additional deaths due to the coronavirus.  The total number of deaths in Oregon is now at 140.  
  • Hospitalized: The number of Oregonians who have been hospitalized with symptoms, and who have also tested positive for the disease, increased by 6, and is now at 714.
  • Presumptive Cases: OHA is now including “presumptive COVID-19 cases” in its daily reports, consistent with recently amended guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A presumptive case is someone who does not yet have a positive PCR test result but is showing symptoms and has had close contact with a confirmed case. If they later test positive by PCR, those will be recategorized as confirmed cases.  Today the number of new presumptive cases is 8, with the total at 90.
  • Other Hospital Information:
    • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 137 (no change from yesterday). Of those, 52 have already received a positive test back.
    • Available ICU Beds: 250 (no change from yesterday).
    • Other Available Beds: 1,939 (no change from yesterday).
    • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 43 (no change from yesterday).
    • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 13 (no change from yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 794 (no change from yesterday).
  • Today’s National Numbers:
  • PPE:
  • Other Brief Updates:
    • Tomorrow we’ll be hearing the quarterly revenue forecast from the Office of Economic Analysis (OEA), the first one since the beginning of the pandemic in Oregon. I’ll report on the forecast in tomorrow’s newsletter.  In the meantime, the OEA has a new blog post today that talks about our record unemployment and a number of effects.  As always, great context for an understanding of where we are and perhaps where we are headed.
    • The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released details of the new Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), which provides up to $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers impacted by the pandemic. It includes price supports and purchases of $3 billion in fresh produce, dairy, and meat to be provided to Americans in need. You can read about it here. 
    • An additional 23 adults in custody and 1 staff member at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem have tested positive for COVID in the last few days. That brings the total numbers for OSP to 103 AICs and 22 staff members. 22 of the infected AICs from OSP were deemed vulnerable to serious effects from the virus and transferred from OSP to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville.  The totals for all state prisons is now 136 AICs and 33 staff members.
    • In a briefing with legislators today, the Director of the Early Learning Division, which oversees childcare centers in the state, reported that the first $8 million in CARES Act funding has been approved to go out to emergency childcare centers. Two thousand centers have been approved for funding and will be receiving payments in the next two weeks.  These payments are intended to offset some of the added costs of having to run their centers with fewer children and with more requirements for sanitation and other costs.  The total allocation to Oregon was $38 million, and the second wave of support grants is being prepared now.  Their intended beneficiaries will include centers that have not yet reopened but would like to reopen. They will need financial help doing so with the new emergency requirements continuing.

Federal Judge Upholds Executive Orders.

Yesterday I reported on a lawsuit against Governor Brown’s executive orders issued in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  A judge in Baker Counter ruled them improper and issued an injunction against them, but the injunction was quickly put on hold while the Oregon Supreme Court considers the case.  In the meantime, the various pandemic response orders remain in effect.

A second case has been in the works as well, this one in federal court. This case was filed by attorney James Buchal (who also leads Multnomah County’s Republican Party) on behalf of nine businesses and one nonprofit opposed to the emergency orders, who asserted that they were political in nature and violated their constitutional rights.

This morning U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane found the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on their federal constitutional claims, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court "has distinctly recognized the authority of a state to enact quarantine law and health law of every description.''  He dismissed the case before oral arguments had even begun or the state had responded to the claims.  You can see his full ruling here.

The Oregonian’s Maxine Bernstein has a thorough review of today’s ruling. You can read it here.

Record High Unemployment in Oregon

We now have the full April unemployment numbers showing us the effect of the pandemic and the response to it in Oregon and nationwide.  Oregon’s unemployment rate rose from a near-record-low 3.5 percent in March to a record-high 14.2 percent in April, as COVID-19 business closures shut down a large portion of the economy. This is the highest rate and the largest over-the-month increase in the time that OED has been collecting data in a similar way (i.e., since 1976). (comparable data are available back to 1976).

Here are the highlights of today’s report:

  • Oregon’s unemployment rate rose to a record high of 14.2 percent in April. More than 300,000 Oregonians were unemployed. Increases in unemployment are nationwide, of course. The U.S. unemployment rate was 14.7 percent.
  • Oregon employers shed 253,400 jobs in April, following a loss of 13,200 in March. With 266,600 jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic, about one out of every eight jobs in Oregon was idled or lost.
  • All sectors of Oregon’s economy cut jobs in April. The industries with the most losses were leisure and hospitality (-113,700 jobs), health care and social assistance (-26,800 jobs), retail trade (-22,500), professional and business services (-19,200), government (-13,100), other services (-12,900), construction (-12,000), and manufacturing (-11,600).

Tomorrow’s revenue forecast will show us the effects of these losses on the state budget.

If Colleges and Universities Return to On-Campus Education in the Fall . . .

Anyone who has ever worked at or spent much time on a college campus understands the potential risk of colleges and universities becoming hot spots for transmission of the virus.  I sometimes wonder how much higher the infection rates in Eugene and Corvallis might have been if on-campus courses hadn’t been suspended in March. (They have fortunately stayed very low.)

With institutions hoping to have on-campus programs and residence resume in the fall, they know that they’re going to have to make significant changes in a variety of areas to reduce the risk of their institutions becoming hotbeds of transmission.  As you can imagine, a lot is happening on a national level to plan for this and make recommendations.

One of the leading voices in this arena is the American College Health Association, which brings together those working in student health centers and other college and university student services.  The ACHA’s COVID-19 Task Force, which brings together professionals from around the country, created a Reopening Guidelines Committee to work on recommendations for colleges and universities to follow.

The Reopening Guidelines Committee recently completed its work and presented its recommendations: “CONSIDERATIONS FOR REOPENING INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE COVID-19 ERA”.  They’re very thorough and make a great deal of sense, but frankly, they’re rather daunting.  Our colleges and universities clearly have many challenges facing them.

Tri-Met Prepares for Phase One

Legislators heard from Tri-Met today about its plans to get buses and light rail ready for broader use.  Right now they are still encouraging those who do not need to use public transit for get to essential work and appointments to refrain from using it, but that will change.  Here is a description of some of the things you’ll soon be seeing on buses and MAX cars, including mask dispensers and hand sanitizers, and other upcoming changes.

Additional Graphs:

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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.  Also, if someone forwarded you this newsletter and you’d like to get it directly, you can sign up for it 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,

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Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23

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email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-986-1723
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301