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May 27, 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’m happy to say that once again we have gone three days without a COVID-related death. I think this is the third time that has happened over the last few weeks. I hope we can go at least one more additional day this time. Unfortunately, we do see an increase in cases reported today, despite a slight reduction in the number of tests for some reason. The number of new COVID hospitalizations also appears to be on the increase.
Legislative committees are continuing to meet this week and are receiving updates on the many facets of the response to the COVID crisis. In today’s newsletter, you’ll find information coming out of the House Business and Labor Committee this afternoon.
Finally, I need to correct something that I said yesterday. I mentioned that OHA had clarified its guidance for social gatherings where there might be multiple gatherings within a single facility or property. I said that the current limit for gatherings was 25 in Phase One counties and 10 for those not yet in Phase One. That wasn’t correct, or at least it’s more nuanced than that. For counties not yet in Phase One, the limit on ordinary social gatherings is indeed 10; however, for “cultural, civic, and religious gatherings” the limit is 25 even for counties not yet in Phase One. Sorry about that.
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
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Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 68 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 3,947.
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Total Tests: The total number of tests in Oregon now stands at 115,450. 116,901 That’s an increase of 1,451 tests.
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Ratio: The percentage of positive results for today is 4.7%. Today’s national percentage is 6.5%. See below for a graph showing Oregon’s daily percentage changes over the last 14 days.
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Deaths: I’m happy again to report 0 additional deaths due to the coronavirus. The total number of deaths in Oregon remains at 148 for the third day in a row.
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Hospitalized: The number of Oregonians who have been hospitalized with symptoms, and who have also tested positive for the disease, increased by 7, and is now at 759.
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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 3, and the total of presumptive cases is now at 91.
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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): 146 (3 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 55 have already received a positive test back.
- Available ICU Beds: 198 (2 more than yesterday).
- Other Available Beds: 1,019 (244 fewer than yesterday).
- ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 35 (5 fewer than yesterday).
- COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 16 (1 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 797 (1 fewer than yesterday).
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Dashboards:
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Today’s National Numbers:
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PPE:
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Other Brief Updates
- OHA reported that contact tracing has revealed a large outbreak at a Portland-area company. They are still investigating and will reveal the employer’s name within the coming days. 41 new cases in Multnomah County were reported today.
- Washington County has applied to begin Phase One reopening on June 1.
- It now appears that Multnomah County will propose reopening on June 12. They want to fully ramp up their tracing and testing capacity first, particularly with respect to containment among communities of color.
- If you’d like more details about the public health work that Multnomah County has been doing in the face of the pandemic, along with a detailed description of their reopening planning process, here's a YouTube video of a presentation that county leaders gave to the Portland City Council last week.
- I’ve previously mentioned the series of Tuesday/Thursday webinars that Work Systems Inc. (the Portland metro area workforce development agency) has been holding to help laid-off workers navigate the bureaucracy in the midst of the current economic crisis. I’ve just learned that tomorrow’s webinar will focus on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and will include someone from the department’s PUA unit to answer questions and give advice. If you have already participated in one of the earlier WSI Thursday webinars, your previous Zoom link will still work. If not, you need to register in advance at https://www.worksystems.org/node/539.
COVID Weekly Report
OHA has just released its weekly report. It will look familiar, but there is an additional section on hospitalizations around the state. You’ll see that in the last week six hospitals had ten or more COVID patients. In order of number of patients they are Salem Hospital, Providence Portland, Hillsboro Medical Center, OHSU, Providence St. Vincent, and Legacy Emanuel. An additional 33 hospitals around the state had at least one COVID patient but fewer than 10.
You’ll again see the list of congregate care facilities that have had three or more infections or at least one fatality. The number of such facilities is now 15, down from last week’s 17.
You’ll see that the infection rate among communities of color continues to be higher, and in some cases much higher than among the white, non-Hispanic population.
And finally, you’ll see the rate of infections per 10,000 residents of each of the state’s zip codes. Five rural zip codes in Marion County continue to stand out, as does southeast Multnomah County and Warm Springs in Jefferson County. Here is a zip code locator for you to use.
Report on UI/PUA Benefits
The House Business and Labor Committee met today and heard updates on a number of employment-related fronts. Among the most anticipated was the report from the Employment Department on the status of the various Unemployment Insurance programs, including the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. You can see the PowerPoint presentation here.
According to the department and division directors, more than 94% of new regular UI claims have paid within three weeks. Unfortunately, given the huge numbers of claimants, that means that nearly 25,000 were left waiting. Since virtually everyone was laid off roughly at the same time, the department decided to process claims by going through the simplest ones first, in an effort to start paying as many as possible as quickly as possible. What that meant was that any claim where there was the slightest complication—employment in another state, failure to hear back immediately from an employer, multiple employers, the slightest error in filling out the form—put a claim to the back of the queue. They are using their more experienced, pre-COVID claims processors (remember, nearly all those doing the work have been on the job for only a matter of weeks) to catch up on this backlog.
The real problem remains with the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Even if a person started filing in March, if their claim has been deemed to be a PUA claim rather than a UI claim, work on their application couldn’t begin until May and most won’t be completed until we’re into June. As I mentioned last week, they are now starting to call or email PUA claimants to let them know that their claim is in the queue to be processed. They are also putting additional people from other divisions on the phones to provide information and answer very simple questions.
Again, the good news is that once a claim is finally processed, workers can feel confident that they will get their back-benefits. The bad news is that this is affecting thousands of people who have to deal with the certainty of unpaid bills and the uncertainty of just when it will end.
To watch the presentation, go to the committee page and click on the button next to the meeting date.
ADDENDUM: I’ve just learned that tomorrow’s Work Systems, Inc.’s 2 pm webinar will focus on PUA. Someone from the department’s PUA Unit will be there to answer questions and offer advice specific to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. If you have already participated in one of the earlier WSI Thursday webinars, your previous Zoom link will still work. If not, you need to register in advance at https://www.worksystems.org/node/539.
Also, Information about Reopening Safety from OSHA
Business and Labor also heard a presentation from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration on workplace safety under the constraints of the pandemic. Here is Oregon OSHA’s PowerPoint presentation for the meeting.
As you can imagine, much of Oregon OSHA’s work these days is spent responding to complaints around perceived violations of the Governor’s executive orders. They have received more than 4000 complaints in the last two months, double what they ordinarily receive in a given year. In the PowerPoint you can see the types of complainants, the frequency of complaints by industry, and the most common complaints.
The committee also heard from representatives of business and labor about steps being taken—or that need to be taken—to promote worker safety in these times.
You can find their testimony in the meeting materials, along with information provided to the committee on other agenda items, which included sessions on Workers Comp and Residential/Commercial foreclosures.
Again: Upcoming Legislative Committee Hearings
Here again, a reminder that the remaining House committees will be meeting for the rest of this week. Then, the Senate committees will convene during the first week of June.
Most of the hearings will be COVID-focused, but most will also include briefings, updates, and reports on a number of other issues, and in many cases will include topics likely to be the subject of legislation next session.
We now have the Senate agendas posted, along with the House. (My own committees are Senate Environment and Natural Resources, Judiciary, and Rules.) I’m listing them all below in order of appearance. You can click on them to see their agendas, and you can use the same links if you want to watch the hearings (either live or after the fact) or get to the meeting materials.
May 28
House Natural Resources Committee, 8:00 am
House Energy and Environment Committee, 11:30 am
House Judiciary Committee, 3:00 pm
May 29
House Education Committee, 11:30 am
House Water Committee, 3:00 pm
June 1
Senate Labor and Business Committee, 8:00 am
Senate Health Care Committee, 12:00 pm
June 2
Senate Committee on Mental Health, 8:00 am
Senate Education Committee, 12:00 pm
June 3
Senate Judiciary Committee, 8:00 am
Senate Human Services Committee, 12:00 pm
June 4
Senate General Government and Emergency Preparedness Committee, 8:00 am
Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, 12:00 pm
June 5
Senate Committee on Wildfire and Recovery, 8:00 am
Senate Housing and Development, 12:00 pm
June 10
Senate Rules and Executive Appointments, 12:00 pm (No agenda posted yet. The meeting will be for the purpose of confirming executive appointments.)
Additional Graphs:
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,
 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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