August 3rd COVID-19 Update

August 3, 2020

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 815 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID since Friday, an average of 272 positive tests per day. The cumulative total for those testing positive and presumed positive is
• Total Tests: The number of tests has increased by 12,879 since Friday, an average of 4,293 per day. The cumulative total number of tests is now 416,120.
• Ratio: The percentage of positive tests for the last three days is 6.3% of total results. The national percentage today is 6.8%. 
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 2 additional deaths due to the coronavirus today. You can read more about those we lost further down in the newsletter.  The total number of deaths in Oregon is now 328.
• Hospitalized: OHA reports that an additional 48 Oregonians have been hospitalized due to COVID since Friday, an average of 16 hospitalizations per day. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID is now 1,655.
• Presumptive Cases: OHA is 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 total number of presumed positives is now 1,011.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 215 (7 more than Friday). Of those, 153 have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 170 (53 more than Friday).
  • Other Available Beds: 760 (73 more than Friday).
  • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 62 (3 fewer than Friday).
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 27 (5 fewer than Friday).
  • Available Ventilators: 782 (12 more than yesterday).
• Dashboards
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 57,543,852 (up 732,690 from yesterday).
  • Positive Tests: 4,694,126 (up 49,561 from yesterday).
  • Deaths: 147,653 (up 519 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:
  • The OHA weekly COVID testing summary was released today, and it shows two troubling developments. First, it confirms something that the daily data has been showing: the welcome decline in positivity rate that we saw the previous week came to an end last week, with the weekly percent positive going from 4.8% to 6.1%.  Second, for the second week in a row, we’re seeing a decline in tests here in Oregon, from 39, 301 reported two weeks ago to 35,254 reported today.  It’s not clear why this is happening, since the state theoretically has the capacity to do 48,000 tests per week now.  I’ll try to find an answer to that.  We do know that the problem with very slow turnaround times for getting results back from national commercial labs is getting worse.
  • Legislators received a COVID update from the Department of Human Services today, reporting on the latest impacts and decisions for the different program areas that DHS oversees: long-term care, adult protective services, child services, disability services, and “self-sufficiency” programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Employment Related Day Care.

Coming Up on Thursday: Pre-Session Town Hall

Reps Barbara Smith Warner, Alissa Keny-Guyer, and I will be holding a pre-Special Session Zoom Town Hall this Thursday (8/6) from 5:30pm- 7:00.  You must pre-register, which you can do so here.  Hope you can make it.

Another Week of Legislative Work On Police Reform

During the first special session, the Legislature created a new House/Senate Joint Committee on Transparency in Policing and Use of Force Reform in order to keep working on policing reform.  They’ve been meeting on a regular basis in public session, hearing from experts and taking public testimony on the problems they’re trying to address.

As I understand it, they are planning to meet this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but at this point an agenda is only posted for Wednesday. 

It’s not clear at this point which of the concepts will be ready to be introduced as bills for the special session next week.  There’s still a difference of opinion in the Senate about whether or not we should be doing anything other than budget bills next week.  I believe that we need to keep moving forward on the reform bills, at least addressing weaknesses that have surfaced in the bills that we passed in June.  Last week’s hearings suggested that there are some that are going to need more work, but there are others that should be ready to go.  This week’s hearings will be crucial for helping us to make this decision.

If you go to Wednesday’s agenda page linked below and then scroll down, you’ll find information on how to sign up to speak remotely or to submit written comment.  You’ll also find links under MEETING MATERIALS to the drafts and redrafts of the legislative concepts on the agenda as they come in, as well as testimony that has already come in. 

Here is the agenda for Wednesday’s hearing. Some have been seen before and others are new.  Notice that not all the concepts have links yet.  That means that we’re still waiting for the drafts to come back from the legislative legal drafters.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5th

• LC 742 (use of “non-lethal” weapons).
• LC 743 (restrictions on police uniforms and requirement to have officer name visible). Here is the preliminary staff description of the concept.
• LC 745 (prohibiting “chokeholds” from police use of force). Here is the preliminary staff description of the concept. (This description was written before the most current version of  the LC, which adds corrections officers to the prohibition.  This analysis will likely be updated before Thursday.
• LC 751 (creates the Task Force on Uniform Statewide Law Enforcement Disciplinary Standards).  This is a proposal from Senator Dallas Heard (Roseburg) to flesh out the disciplinary standards that arbitrators will be bound to follow in making decisions regarding officer misconduct.
• LC 761 Relating to the use of force by peace officer
• LC 762 Relating to public safety employees
• LC 763 (creates statewide database on use of force by peace officers).

Oregon’s Big Budget Hit

NPR published an analysis today of the serious damage that COVID has inflicted on state budgets via revenue declines.  It allows you to see how individual states have been affected.  You’ll see that in the period between March and May, Oregon’s state revenues declined by 53% relative to what they were a year ago.

That’s the biggest hit taken by any state.  Oregon’s revenues are picking up this quarter, but overall revenues will continue to be down relative to 2019 assumptions for quite some time.  That’s primarily why legislators are going to Salem next week for a second special session to rebalance the budget. 

But you should know that according to Oregon’s Office of Economic Analysis, the main reason that Oregon is at the top of the list of revenue reductions is due to the “perfect storm” of individual kicker payments going out at exactly the same time that state revenues were in free-fall.  If you subtract out the kicker amount (ultimately around $1.6 billion), Oregon’s budget hit is broadly similar to those in other states, according to the Office of Economic Analysis.

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 272.  More than 2/3 of the state’s new cases today again come from outside the Portland Tri-County region, with Umatilla County again showing the most new cases in the state.  Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Baker (3)

Benton (2)

Clackamas (21)

Clatsop (2)

Coos (1)

Deschutes (3)

Douglas (2)

Jackson (9)

Jefferson (1)

Josephine (2)

Klamath (2)

Lane (5)

Lincoln (4)

Linn (6)

Malheur (3)

Marion (27)

Morrow (1)

Multnomah (49)

Polk (7)

Sherman (1)

Tillamook (2)

Umatilla (64)

Wasco (9)

Washington (19)

Yamhill (27)

And the Deaths

Oregon's 327^th COVID-19 death is a 71-year-old man in Marion County who tested positive on July 6 and died on August 1.

Oregon's 328^th COVID-19 death is a 50-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on July 20 and died on July 29, at Providence Portland Medical Center.

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