August 14th COVID-19 Update

Michael Dembrow

August 14, 2020

I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends.   

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TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • Positive Cases: OHA reports that 300 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID. The cumulative total for those testing positive is 21,441.
  • Total Tests: The number of tests has increased by 5,831. The cumulative number of tests since the pandemic began is now 471,935.
  • Ratio: The percentage of positive tests today is 5.1%. The national percentage today is 5.8%. 
  • Deaths: I’m very 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 COVID deaths in Oregon is now 385.
  • Hospitalized: OHA reports that an additional 10 Oregonians have been hospitalized with COVID. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID since the beginning of the pandemic is 1863.
  • 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.  OHA reports 28 new presumptive cases today and a cumulative total of 1,172 Oregonians presumed positive.
  • Other Hospital Information:
    • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 224 (8 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 167 have already received a positive test back.
    • Available ICU Beds: 172 (13 more than yesterday)
    • Other Available Beds: 643 (17 more than yesterday).
    • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 57 (same as yesterday).
    • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 16 (6 fewer than yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 769 (2 fewer than yesterday).
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  • Today’s National Numbers:
  • 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:

Another Corrections Death Announced

The Department of Corrections announced today that a second adult in custody has died of COVID-19He was in his sixties and had been incarcerated at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario (Malheur County), which has been a COVID hot spot for the last month. Presumably, the disease came into the facility via a corrections officer residing in the nearby region on the Idaho/Oregon border. 

At Snake River 161 adults in custody have tested positive, as have 58 corrections officers, according to the DOC COVID website. Fourteen AICs are currently in medical isolation there.  For the corrections system as a whole, 530 AICs have tested positive, as have 146 officers, since the beginning of the pandemic.  Of those, 460 AICs have , as have 93 staff. 

The total population of AICs in the system is approximately 14,000.  With 530 positive test results, that means that 3.8% of the population has tested positive for COVID.  That’s far higher than infection rates in the general population (0.5%).  Once the disease enters a crowded facility where social distancing cannot be maintained, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to contain it.

As I mentioned in my report on the most recent OHA Weekly Report, nearly one-third of all workplace outbreak cases are in state correctional institutions.  According to that report, three of the four largest workplace outbreaks in Oregon right now are in correctional institutions located in counties that are COVID hot spots:

  • Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution (Umatilla County): 199
  • Oregon State Penitentiary (Marion County): 189
  • Snake River Correctional Institution (Malheur County): 176 (now 219)

New Face Covering Guidance Issued for Office Workers

Governor Kate Brown and the Oregon Health Authority have issued revised guidance requiring face coverings or face shields for employees in private office spaces, in addition to public office spaces.  You can find the updated face covering guidance on the OHA website.

The guidance requires face coverings in public and private building hallways, bathrooms, elevators, lobbies, break rooms, and other common spaces, unless employees are at individual work spaces or in meeting rooms where 6 feet of distance from other people can be maintained.

The revised guidance also provides an exception for face coverings, allowing for the brief removal of face coverings in situations where someone’s identity needs to be confirmed for visual comparison, such as interactions in banks or with law enforcement.

Recent Study Confirms that Many COVID Cases in Oregon Going Undetected

Each day the CDC publishes a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).  It lists and links to peer-reviewed studies and reports from the field on a variety of disease-related topics.  Not surprisingly, many of items on the list these days are COVID-related.

Today’s MMWR includes a report from Oregon, with the seductive title, “Notes from the Field: Seroprevalence Estimates of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Convenience Sample — Oregon, May 11–June 15, 2020.”  The study was done by OHA epidemiologists, using random blood samples taken from patients at 19 healthcare facilities around the state.  They found that of the 897 samples taken, nine (i.e., 1%) tested positive for the presence of COVID antibodies, suggesting that these were individuals who had previously been infected with COVID. This is ten times the rate of those who tested positive for the disease as of May 31 (0.1%),

By the way, since then, that percentage has risen to approximately .5% of Oregonians.  If the antibody study were done today, the percentage of those with antibodies would presumably have risen correspondingly.

Interestingly, there were no incidents of antibodies in samples from children under the age of 18.  However, we know that children in Oregon have been infected with the virus: as of today, the number of those 18 and under who have been found to be positive stands at 3,343, or 15% of all infections.  It may be that children don’t form antibodies at the same rate as adults, which accounts for the discrepancy.  The authors of the study point to an earlier antibody study in Boise that suggests that “seroprevalence” does increase with age. Does this mean that children are more likely to be reinfected with the virus since they have less tendency to form antibodies?  I’m sure that there will be further studies looking at this.

Even if as many as 1% of all Oregonians turn out to have had the virus, one thing remains true:  nearly all of us remain vulnerable to infection at this point.

For an overview (in plainer English) of the report, OHA issued a press release about the study today.

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 323.  More than 2/3 of today’s cases come from outside the Portland Tri-County region.  Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Baker (7)

Benton (2)

Clackamas (21)

Clatsop (1)

Coos (2)

Deschutes (6)

Hood River (8)

Jackson (23)

Jefferson (4)

Josephine (6)

Lane (4)

Lincoln (3)

Linn (9)

Malheur (18)

Marion (49)

Morrow (10)

Multnomah (52)

Polk (13)

Tillamook (1)

Umatilla (37)

Wasco (2)

Washington (25)

Yamhill (21)

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 384th COVID-19 death is a 73-year-old woman in Lane County who tested positive on July 25 and died August 12.

Oregon’s 385th COVID-19 death is an 85-year-old man in Umatilla County who tested positive on August 3 and died August 12 at his residence.

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,

dembrow signature

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