June 10th COVID-19 Update

June 10, 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.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• Positive Cases: OHA reports that 66 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID-19.  The cumulative total is now 4,907
• Total Tests: The total number of tests in Oregon now stands at 156,605. That’s an increase of 3,135 tests from yesterday.
• Ratio: The percentage of positive results for today is 2.1%. Today’s national percentage is 5.0%.  See below for a graph showing Oregon’s daily percentage changes over the last 14 days. 
• Deaths: I’m happy to report 0 additional deaths due to the coronavirus today.  The total number of deaths in Oregon remains at 169.         
• Hospitalized: OHA reported 6 new hospitalizations today. The cumulative total of those who’ve been hospitalized for COVID-19 is now 857.
• 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’s number of new presumed cases is 6, and the total number of those presumed positive is 153.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 136 (9 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 62 have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 175 (15 fewer than yesterday).
  • Other Available Beds: 889 (37 fewer than yesterday).
  • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 40 (7 fewer than yesterday).
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 18 (2 fewer than yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 784 (3 more than yesterday).
• Dashboards:
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 21,467,820 (up 419,637 from yesterday).
  • Positive Tests: 1,991,527 (up 20,931 from yesterday).
  • Deaths: 106,870 (up 889 from yesterday).
  • These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can follow their updated numbers for each, state and the nation as a whole here.
• PPE:
  • In the last 24 hours the Emergency Coordination Center has received 101,000 pairs of gloves. You can track the history of incoming and outgoing PPE shipments here.
• Additional Brief Updates:
  • Among the most difficult and dangerous sources of COVID infections are our state’s food processing facilities. They don’t themselves create risk for the general public, but they do for those who work there.  Workers spread the virus among themselves and then out to those with whom they come into extended contact.  If we are to contain the spread of the virus, it’s essential that we make these facilities as safe as possible for workers AND make sure we have systems in place to detect and address outbreaks.  To that end, OHA has been working on a “playbook” for how it, local public health agencies, the Department of Agriculture, Oregon Occupational Safety & Health Administration, and others will jointly respond to outbreaks in food processing facilities.  That playbook is now posted.  They also working on a playbook regarding farmworkers and agricultural settings.  I’ll send the link to that playbook when it’s ready.
  • We’ve just received the results of OSU’s “TRACE” COVID study for Bend. You can read it here.  As has been the case for the TRACE surveys in Corvallis, 100 households were randomly selected for testing to get a sense of the prevalence of the virus among the general population.  As was the case for the last round in Corvallis, the Bend results showed 0 positive results among those tested. Does that mean there are no COVID cases in Bend?    There have been 134 positive test results to date, a slow and steady increase, and likely more among people that have not shown symptoms or been tested.  But the OSU test results suggests that at this point the virus is not widespread in the community.  The final weekend of sampling will be this coming weekend in Corvallis.

Planning for the Next School Year

In an online meeting with legislators and local officials, the Department of Education released its current thinking regarding the 2020-21 school year.  This comes as the result of weeks of input from parents, school board members, educational staff, and public health experts.  The plan is detailed in a document called "Ready Schools, Safe Learners: Guidance for School Year 2020-21."

If you’re not up for reading the entire document, here is a link to today's presentation slides.

You’ll see that these are guidelines for districts, but there is a great deal of flexibility for individual school boards to come up with strategies that work for them, protecting students and workers while adjusting to local conditions.  Some schools may choose to begin the fall continuing to use remote learning entirely, while others may choose to return to face-to-face entirely, and others may choose a hybrid combination of the two. As long as they are protecting health while assuring that all students have the means to succeed, they will have the flexibility to create plans that work for them.  They will of course need to be prepared to change their plans depending on the severity of the pandemic in the fall. 

Districts (including private schools and public charter schools) will need to submit their plans to the state by August 15.  Some districts have chosen to be pilot projects and have already created their blueprints, which are available to view on the Ready Schools website.  That website includes a variety of information, FAQs, and resources, including a state-by-state review of planning across the country.

As individual school districts work on their individual blueprints, ODE is looking for feedback on the overall plan over the next month.  If you have reactions and suggestions to share with them, I encourage you to do so.

Where Are Today’s New Cases?

If we put together the positive test results and new “presumptive” cases reported today, the overall number of new cases is 114.  Here is the breakdown by county for today: 

Clackamas (6)

Hood River (2)

Jackson (6)

Jefferson (6)

Lane (1)

Lincoln (4)

Marion (5)

Multnomah (32)

Umatilla (4)

Washington (6)

 This Week’s OHA Weekly Report Just Released

OHA today released its COVID weekly report.

Here is the big-picture takeaway from the report:  Newly reported COVID-19 cases increased by 75% during the week ending June 7 after increasing by 18% during the previous week. The number of COVID-19 tests reported (18,271) increased only slightly compared to the preceding week while the percent positive rose from 1.9% to 3.0%. The number of new infections reported daily approached levels seen during the heights of the outbreak. Fortunately, hospitalizations and deaths are far below their peaks, and the percentage of emergency department visits for COVID-19-like illness remain below 1%.  Large workplace outbreaks (Table 6) account for much of the recent increase, however some counties without large outbreaks have also experienced increases.

Along with the testing data and the racial/ethnic/age/gender demographics, the report again provides information about signs, symptoms, and risk factors; recovery; workplace outbreaks; hospital rates; and the breakdown of cases by zip code.

This week we again see a list of those workplaces with more than 30 employees that have five or more reported cases.  The list of workplaces with active outbreaks numbers 24 this time, mainly (but not exclusively) in food processing.  Cases at an additional 15 workplaces are considered “resolved” now.  “Resolved” means that more than 28 days have passed since the onset of the most recent case.

You’ll see that rural zip codes in Marion County continue to stand out as hot spots, as does one in southeast Multnomah County and one in Washington County. This time the 97365 zip code is added to that list, the result of the outbreak at Pacific Seafood in Newport.  Here is a zip code locator for you to use as you look at the zip code numbers.

I’d like to close with two further observations from the report.

First, you’ll see under the Congregate Care section that OHA is now reporting the death of one congregate care worker.  You’ll remember that there was some false reporting of worker deaths last week, due to information incorrectly provided to federal agencies by facilities.  As a result of concern over that (which I and others expressed), OHA will now include worker deaths (let’s hope there are no more) in future weekly reports.  Unfortunately, we don’t know anything about the circumstances behind this newly-reported death, as a result of a policy decision to protect the identities of those affected.  Let me just say that I agree that we need to work hard to protect the privacy, anonymity, and dignity of those affected by COVID.  But if there’s something about a particular tragic case that can help us prevent future tragedies, I do believe that it’s important for that information to be communicated.  I believe that there’s a way to do both: protect the worker and provide more specificity about the case. I’ll be pushing for that.

The second observation is that it’s increasingly clear from the demographic data that COVID is having a crushing effect on our communities of color.  By looking at infections per 10,000 residents within specified communities, the weekly report shows clearly that Black Oregonians are three times more likely than White Oregonians to be positive for the disease; Native Americans are nearly four times more likely; Hispanic Oregonians are 4.5 times more likely; and Pacific Islanders are nearly 10 times more likely.  It should be clear that not only do we need to take serious steps to protect these communities from harm, but we need to commit to combating the structural reasons in our society that create these health discrepancies.

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:

• Multnomah County has a status report on reopening.
• You can view the reopening status of all 36 counties here.
• Here is the OHA’s coronavirus page, with links to a number of resources. 
• Oregon's Office of Emergency Management now has a website for information about COVID-19.
• You can sign up here for regular coronavirus updates from OHA.
• Multnomah County has an excellent website with lots of really important advice and guidance.
• Here’s one from the Governor’s Office.
• The Employment Department has put together a webpage with Q&A’s on a number of employment issues related to COVID-19 (e.g., eligibility for Unemployment Insurance benefits).
• The Oregon Education Department has a new site for COVID-19 updates.
• The Department of Corrections has a COVID tracking website.

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