June 15th COVID-19 Update

June 15, 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.

The great news for today is a Supreme Court ruling upholding the workplace rights of all workers, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity.  It was a crucial affirmation of our core values as a nation, and seeing the opinion supported by 2/3 of the Court made that affirmation even stronger.

The not-so-great news is that we’re continuing to see COVID infections and hospitalizations rise in Oregon. It’s not a statewide spike, not a statewide surge, but we are seeing local spikes, some of them in our most rural areas, as a result of workplace and other outbreaks. Now that the Pacific Seafood outbreak in Newport appears to have died down (no new Lincoln County infections reported today), we are seeing a big outbreak in Union County in far Eastern Oregon.  Initial media reports suggest that the source has been tracked to indoor church services where the numbers and close contact exceeded reopening requirements.  Let’s hope that those who’ve tested positive aren’t hit with severe consequences from the infection.

In terms of today’s daily statewide numbers, I’ve had to do some three-day averaging since we didn’t receive positive test numbers or hospitalization numbers over the weekend.  Sorry about that, but you’ll still get a good sense of where we are.

And finally, if you haven’t done so already, I urge you to read this powerful opinion piece by my colleague and good friend Senator Lew Frederick. It demonstrates very clearly why the time for action on racial justice and police accountability is long overdue.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• Positive Cases: OHA reports that 418 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID-19 over the last three days, an average of 139 per day.  The cumulative total is now 5,207.
• Total Tests: The cumulative total number tests in Oregon now stands at 175,941.  That’s an increase of 9,922 over the last three days, or an average of 3,307 per day.
• Ratio: The percentage of positive results for the last three days is 4.2%. Today’s national percentage is 4.1%. (The national average for the last three days is 4.5%.) See below for a graph showing Oregon’s daily percentage changes over the last 14 days.
• Deaths: I’m afraid I have to report 4 additional death due to the coronavirus today.  The total number of deaths in Oregon is now at 180.   
• Hospitalized: OHA reported 24 new hospitalizations since Friday, an average of 8 per day. The cumulative total of those who’ve been hospitalized for COVID-19 is now 899.
• 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. The number of new presumed cases increased by 25 since Friday, and the total number of those presumed positive is 195.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 125 (5 fewer than Friday). Of those, 72 have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 222 (64 more than Friday).
  • Other Available Beds: 1084 (202 more than Friday).
  • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 50 (3 more than Friday).
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 19 (4 more than Friday).
  • Available Ventilators: 790 (2 fewer than Friday).
• Dashboards:
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 23,984,592 (up 449,488 from yesterday).
  • Positive Tests: 2,103,549 (up 18,521 from yesterday).
  • Deaths: 109,982 (up 375 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 not received any additional Personal Protective Equipment. You can track the history of incoming and outgoing PPE shipments here.
• Additional Brief Updates:
  • Oregon State University has just announced that it will expand its community COVID TRACE study to Newport. The study randomly selects residents for testing in order to get a baseline sense of community spread of the virus.  Newport is the locus of the current workplace outbreak at Pacific Seafood.  OSU scientists hope to provide a sense of how effective contact tracing has been in controlling spread from workers exposed to the virus.  You can find details about this latest step in the project here.
  • The latest OHA weekly testing report is now out. It reveals growing numbers of tests (we have hit a key CDC benchmark of testing 2% of the state population) but also a growing percentage of positive test results, due to a combination of reopening and workplace outbreaks. 

OHA Releases Plan for Comprehensive Testing of Long-Term Care Facilities

The OHA has just released the plan that they’ve been working on with DHS for comprehensive testing of residents, mainly elderly, of long-term care facilities.  The plan involves testing EVERY resident and staff member of every one of the 31,000 residents and 29,000 workers at the 680 large LTC facilities throughout the summer.  It’s an ambitious plan.  They’ll start in those parts of the state where we’ve been seeing the most COVID cases.

I'm pleased that they’ve come up with a serious, comprehensive plan for testing vulnerable residents statewide. This is the population for whom this disease is most dangerous.  It does makes sense for us to focus first on facilities in the regions where the disease is most prevalent and move statewide from there. 

However, I'll continue to encourage 0HA and DHS to test workers first and more frequently.  They're the vectors to the outside world, so we need to make sure that they're not bringing in the virus without knowing it.

Legislators Call for “Decompression” at Our State Prisons

I was part of a group of Judiciary Committee legislators who released a multi-faceted “decompression” plan today to address the problem of COVID-19 in our state prisons. The Department of Corrections has been working hard to keep the virus out of our penitentiaries, but we’ve seen that under their crowded conditions once the virus gets inside, it spreads quickly.  The Oregon State Penitentiary is the locus of our largest outbreak in any workplace or congregate-care facility. In the system as a whole, infections have been reported for 174 adults in custody and 49 staff members. 

I’ve been working on this plan with Senate Judiciary Chair Floyd Prozanski, House Judiciary Chair Janelle Bynum, Former House Judiciary Chair Tawna Sanchez, and Public Safety Co-Chair Senator James Manning, Jr. (himself a former Corrections Officer and Police Officer). 

As I reported last month, the Governor has decided to move ahead with one element of our recommendations: considering early release for individuals who are at particular risk of severe consequences from the disease (e.g., serious kidney, heart, and pulmonary problems), have served most of their sentences, and did not commit violent crimes. That’s an important step. 

But we do believe that there is still more work to do.  We are calling for further consideration of gradually moving non-violent offenders who are within a few months of the ends of their sentences into post-prison supervision, thereby further easing the pressures on the system.  Doing so, we will make it easier for DOC to protect staff and AICs in the coming months.

For details of the plan, here is a press release with a link to the plan.

 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 184.  Today’s numbers are noteworthy for two reasons: Marion County’s number of new cases is the lowest it’s been for a long time, and rural Union County is extremely high, the result of an outbreak there.  OHA is coordinating with Union County public health authorities to respond and contain. 

Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Clackamas (6)

Hood River (1)

Jackson (1)

Jefferson (1)

Klamath (2)

Lake (1)

Malheur (2)

Marion (4)

Morrow (1)

Multnomah (37)

Polk (3)

Umatilla (9)

Union (99)

Wasco (2)

Washington (15)

Yamhill (1)

And the Deaths:

The OHA had this to say about the four individuals we most recently lost to COVID-19:

Oregon’s 177th COVID-19 death is a 78-year-old woman in Clackamas County, who tested positive on June 6 and died on June 12 in her residence. She had underlying medical conditions.

Oregon’s 178th COVID-19 death is an 85-year-old man in Clackamas County, who tested positive on June 5 and died on June 14 in his residence. He had underlying medical conditions.

Oregon’s 179th COVID-19 death is a 65-year-old woman in Clackamas County, who tested positive on June 5 and died on June 12 in her residence. She had underlying medical conditions.

Oregon’s 180th COVID-19 death is a 75-year-old woman in Clackamas County, who tested positive on June 4 and died on June 11 in her residence. She had underlying medical conditions.

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