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August 21, 2020
I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends.
Today’s newsletter includes encouraging COVID numbers for today: a decline in cases and positivity rate, a big decline in new hospitalizations, and only two deaths reported today. You’ll also be able to read about the most recent epidemiological projections for Oregon, which continues to show improvement. But you’ll also see a sobering assessment from the Governor and her medical advisors, suggesting that further improvements in face-covering, contact tracing, workplace monitoring, and quarantining will be necessary if we are serious about safely reopening schools for in-person instruction.
Finally, you’ll see below that the entire $35 million in $500 emergency relief payments has been disbursed after just two days. 70,000 Oregonians in need either stood in line for immediate payment or made appointments to claim their benefit over the next week or so. The process was not without difficulty--many of those who stood in line had to wait for hours in the heat, many in the rural areas had to travel many miles to get to their local credit union or bank, and the regular operations of the financial institutions were disrupted. But I hope you’ll join me in giving credit to the financial institutions and their employees for stepping up, doing their best, and taking on this task without any extra compensation, ensuring that the entire $35 million would go to those in need.
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
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Positive Cases: OHA reports that 239 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID. The cumulative total for those testing positive is 23,156.
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Total Tests: The number of tests has increased by 4,937. The cumulative number of tests since the pandemic began is now 510,056.
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Ratio: The percentage of positive tests today in Oregon is 4.8% of total results. The national percentage today is 6.2%.
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report 2 additional deaths due to the coronavirus today. You can read about those we lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 414.
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Hospitalized: OHA reports that an additional 5 Oregonians have been hospitalized with COVID-19. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID since the beginning of the pandemic is 1,984,
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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 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 20 additional presumed positives today. The total number of presumed positive cases is currently 1,265.
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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): 173 (2 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 111 have already received a positive test back.
- Available ICU Beds: 161 (19 more than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 656 (44 more than yesterday).
- ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 47 (1 fewer than yesterday).
- COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 19 (2 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 787 (4 more than yesterday).
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Dashboards
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Today’s National Numbers:
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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.
No More Walk-Ins for $500 Relief Payments
Legislators learned today that the $35 million that had been allocated to provide immediate $500 relief payments to low- to middle-income Oregonians who have not yet begun receiving their unemployment benefits has been exhausted after two days. The intended target of 70,000 claimants have either already received their payments or have scheduled appointments with their local financial institutions to come in and claim their benefit.
What that means is that after today, it won’t be possible for claimants without scheduled appointments to receive benefits.
What is also means is that there is obviously a huge amount of need out there. I’m glad the Legislature was able to help a bit.
Governor Pondering Steps to Make It Possible for Schools to Reopen
The Governor held a press conference this morning to provide an update on where the state is in its effort to control the spread of COVID. I wasn’t able to watch it, but I have a sense of what she had to say, as legislators were given a preview from Nik Blosser, her chief-of-staff, prior to the news conference.
Nik walked us through a set of PowerPoint slides that showed how our COVID infection and positivity rates have stabilized, but unfortunately at rates that are still considered too high to safely reopen schools. Our target for % positive test results is 5% statewide, and we are getting close to that, as are most (but not all) of our counties. But the infection rate has stabilized at around 50 cases per 100K, and the target generally is 10 cases per 100K, a rate based on what has been considered best practice in school reopenings in foreign countries.
Here again is a link to the most recent report on where individual counties are in meeting the school reopening metrics.
At our current transmission rate (each case leading to a little less than an additional case (a transmission rate of just under 1.0), it will take us more than six months to get our infection rate down to that level (approximately 60 new cases a day for the state as a whole). If we can get that transmission rate down to .75, we should be able to get there in two months.
We have various decisions to make if we want to speed up that timetable. Page 8 of the PowerPoint has examples of aggressive steps that could get us to that reduction. They include closures of indoor dining at restaurants and bars, travel restrictions, and closing indoor entertainment venues and gyms. However, Blosser made it clear that the Governor is NOT considering these steps, though some are calling for them.
Rather, she is considering a set of actions that you’ll find on Page 9, related to better local enforcement of face-covering requirements, expanded county inspections of restaurants and bars for compliance with COVID workplace standards, better contact tracing, and improved financial and logistical support for infected individuals who need to quarantine. She will likely be taking action to implement these strategies very soon. If successful, they should get us to that 0.75 transmission rate that we need to hit.
The last item on the list—inadequate support for self-isolation--is turning out to be a particular problem in the field, despite action that the Legislature has taken to provide money to help with this. Contact tracing does little good if those infected and affected are not willing or able to safely self-isolate. Quarantining needs to be easy and free from the burdens of cost and social stigma.
The other problem that must be overcome (you’ve seen me write about this repeatedly) is the problem of inadequate testing supplies and testing turnaround time. Further down in the newsletter, you’ll be able to read about an encouraging recent development in our ability to attack that problem.
I’ll let you know about further developments regarding these priority actions.
Disease Model Updated This Week: More Good News
We’ve received the latest update to the Institute for Disease Modeling’s OREGON COVID EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MODEL.
It’s based on data as of the end of last week. Based on that data (which includes both case data and hospitalization data), they believe that the signs continue to be encouraging.
After seeing infection rates decline substantially after the initial school closures and Stay Home orders in March, Oregon’s rates jumped after the initial reopenings, then declined somewhat after the face covering and social distancing orders that were issued in June and July. We are now seeing the ongoing effects of those declines.
The model estimates that, as of August 13, there have been a total of 104,800 cumulative infections in Oregon, but only 23,200 have been diagnosed. Thus, for every positive test result, there are likely another 3.5 undiagnosed cases out there.
The modelers continue to believe that the “Re” (Effective Reproduction Number, the number of secondary cases generated by a single case) in Oregon remains at 1.0. At this point, the rate of increase is steady but stable. If the Re goes down, we’ll see a reduction in new cases. (Other analysts, including Covidtracking.com, believe that the Re is already a little lower, 0.94.)
The projection report again provides us with three possible scenarios looking forward: an “as is” scenario, in which the transmission rate stays where it is now; a “best case” scenario, in which transmission goes down by 10%; and a “worst case” scenario, in which the spread increases by 10%.
As Is
If we continue as we are now between August 14 and September 10 (with an Re of 1.0), the number of positive test results will hold steady at approximately 257 positive test results each day (totaling approximately 900 if we include the undetected cases). The number of daily new severe cases (i.e., requiring hospitalization) remains at approximately 19.
Best Case
In the “best case” scenario, assuming a reduction in spread of 10% between August 14 and September 10th, we see an Re of about 0.75. The daily rate of increase will drop to approximately 86 positive test results per day. The total number of detected and undetected cases will drop to 300. We’ll see the hospitalization rate go down to 11 per day.
Worst Case
In the “worst case” scenario, assuming an INCREASE in spread of 10% over the next four weeks, we see an Re of about 1.25. The number of daily positive test results will increase to approximately 629, with the total number of detected and undetected cases increasing to 2,200 per day by September 10th.. The number of hospitalizations will rise to 29 per day.
Needless to say, the model doesn’t tell us WHICH scenario we will actually experience over the next month. That will be a function of how Oregonians adhere to face-covering, limits on gatherings, and other policies. The modelers believe that for now, the “as-is” scenario is the most likely. To get to our goals for in-person school reopening (see above), we will need to meet the “Best Case” scenario over the next two months.
Oregon State Public Health Laboratory Signs Deal to Improve Testing
Today, OHA announced that it has secured supplies to process more than 400,000 COVID-19 specimens via an agreement between the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory (OSPHL) and ThermoFisher.
The supplies will be distributed to certain qualifying laboratories, increasing Oregon’s overall COVID-19 testing capacity. The agreement will add capacity to process at least an additional 20,000 tests per week on average.
“This is an important step toward securing the COVID-19 testing capacity that our state needs,” said Patrick Allen, OHA director. “As we’ve said for months, without adequate testing, we cannot truly suppress the virus in our communities.”
The new agreement builds on one that OSPHL had in place with ThermoFisher and the federal Department of Health and Human Services in May and June, under which OSPHL received and distributed supplies to process some 130,000 specimens.
OHSU, McKenzie Willamette Hospital and the Willamette Valley Toxicology Laboratory/OSU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory participated in that program. The State Lab will continue to distribute the kits to these three laboratories and will reach out to additional qualified laboratories to further expand testing capacity in Oregon.
Legislators also learned in today’s briefing that the CDC is now calling for weekly testing of all staff at long-term care facilities. I fully support this decision. If we are to protect Oregonians living in congregate care, we need to focus on the points of entry into the facilities, and that’s the staff. They must be tested regularly and frequently.
But it’s not enough for the federal government to tell us that we should be doing this—they must provide us with the supplies to be able to test frequently and with rapid turnaround. To set this requirement without helping us meet it is disingenuous indeed.
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 259. More than 2/3 of the new cases are outside the Portland Tri-County area. Interestingly, the county with the largest number of new cases by far today is Marion County, which was just removed from the “County Watch List” yesterday. Here is the breakdown by county for today:
Benton (2)
Clackamas (16)
Columbia (1)
Coos (1)
Curry (1)
Deschutes (2)
Douglas (1)
Hood River (2)
Jackson (18)
Jefferson (6)
Klamath (2)
Lane (4)
Lincoln (6)
Linn (3)
Malheur (28)
Marion (55)
Morrow (3)
Multnomah (38)
Polk (8)
Umatilla (17)
Union (1)
Wasco (1)
Washington (25)
Yamhill (18)
And The Deaths
Oregon’s 413th COVID-19 death is a 79-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on July 24 and died on Aug. 19 at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center Riverbend.
Oregon’s 414th COVID-19 death is a 96-year-old woman in Marion County who tested positive on Aug. 11 and died on Aug. 19 at Salem Hospital.
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 (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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