Coronavirus Update: Foreclosure Protections Extended, Thoughts on Portland Protests

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House Speaker Tina Kotek

Coronavirus Update: Foreclosure Protections and Portland Protests

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Last Friday marked the 6-month anniversary of the first public report of a coronavirus case in Oregon. Six months. This story here in The Oregonian takes a look back and compares our experience to neighboring states.

In addition to catching up on the numbers and the latest COVID news (since we were off last week), I’m also sharing some thoughts on the Portland protests at the end of this newsletter.


Catching Up on the Numbers

Yesterday’s numbers brought a measure of good news, with the daily case count of 162 being the lowest single-day total the state has seen in two months. In the 10 days since my last newsletter, there have been 2,418 new confirmed cases and 45 new confirmed deaths:

  • Saturday, August 22: 302 cases, 3 deaths
  • Sunday, August 23: 231 cases, 0 deaths
  • Monday, August 24: 220 cases, 3 deaths
  • Tuesday, August 25: 247 cases, 7 deaths
  • Wednesday, August 26: 222 cases, 6 deaths
  • Thursday, August 27: 212 cases, 5 deaths
  • Friday, August 28: 301 cases, 9 deaths
  • Saturday, August 29: 252 cases, 7 deaths
  • Sunday, August 30: 269 cases, 4 deaths
  • Monday, August 31: 162 cases, 1 death

As we know, long term trends are more relevant than daily totals. These charts give some perspective as to where we stood on controlling the virus in mid-August. According to more recent data, the state had a 4.4% test positivity rate for the week of August 23-29. This is encouraging, but we must not let up in our efforts to control the infection rate.


Weekly Cases Per 100,000

Weekly Percentage of Positive Cases

COVID-19 Data Table

Here are two stories recently cited by state epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger about the risks that come from social gatherings:

  • In the first example, 10 people got together for a family party, and two people at the party were likely infectious at the time, though they did not have symptoms. In total, those two cases have led to 20 reported cases spread across 10 households. At least two of the people work with vulnerable populations. One person lived in a multi-generational house with family members with high-risk conditions. So even though the people who went to the party weren’t at higher risk for complications, many of the people who got sick potentially exposed people who are more vulnerable.
  • In the second example, 20 people rented a beach house for a celebration and were together for three days. No one had symptoms during the trip, but four were potentially infectious at the time. Twelve people from the trip got sick, all adults of various ages. These cases then had links to five workplace outbreaks, with a total of more than 300 cases so far.

As we head into the Labor Day weekend, it is really important to downsize gatherings and wear masks!


Updated County Watch List

Last week, Governor Brown took Multnomah and Hood River counties off the state’s County Watch List. Both counties had been on the list since July 30, as The Oregonian reports in more detail here. The article notes that Multnomah County does not have plans to apply for Phase 2 reopening in the near future.

Six counties remain on the list: Baker, Jackson, Jefferson, Malheur, Morrow and Umatilla. Malheur County leads the state in infection rate, as the Malheur Enterprise details here.


County Phase Status 8-31-2020

Foreclosure Protections Extended

Yesterday, Governor Brown extended the state’s existing pandemic-related foreclosure protections until the end of December. The Legislature passed these protections back in June with the passage of House Bill 4204, and the requirements had been in effect until the end of September. The law requires lenders to defer both residential and commercial mortgage payments if a borrower is unable to pay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I applaud the Governor for extending the foreclosure moratorium, and we’re all aware that we also have to do more to protect people at risk for eviction. You can read her statement on her executive order here.


Tomorrow: Virtual Information Session on COVID-19 and Schools

For parents with questions about what school will look like in Oregon during COVID-19, you can join a Facebook Live event hosted by the Oregon Health Authority at 12:30 pm tomorrow, Wednesday, September 2. Representatives from the Oregon Department of Education and the Early Learning Division, as well as state health officer Dr. Dean Sidelinger, will be on hand to answer questions.

Sign up to get a reminder for the event on OHA’s Facebook page here.


The Latest News

  • Last week, the Oregon Department of Human Services announced the state will receive an extra $30 million in federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in September. You can go here for more information.
  • The Oregon Employment Department is looking to implement an additional $300 per week benefit in the next few weeks, as the Statesman Journal reports here.
  • Yesterday, the Oregon Health Authority reported 162 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the statewide total of new and presumptive cases to 26,713. Sadly, one more person has died, meaning there have been 459 Oregonians to die of the coronavirus. You can click the images below for links to interactive data tables about coronavirus in Oregon. Please note the totals below take multiple days into account.

OHA COVID-19 Update 8-31-2020

OHA Epi Curve 8-31-2020

OHA County Map 8-31-2020

Thoughts on Portland Protests

The Portland community has witnessed senseless murders this summer, and the news has been particularly tragic over the last few days. Last Thursday night, 16-year-old Jaelin Scott died from gun violence in a park. And on Saturday night, after a tension-filled day of protests, Aaron Danielson was killed downtown. My condolences go out to the families of the victims, and I urge thorough investigations, arrests, and prosecutions of these crimes.
 
The tension in our lives is palpable – caused by a combination of the challenges of living in a pandemic, the deepening distress of growing income inequality, and the desperate desire for racial justice embedded in the Black Lives Matter movement. Each of us, individually, must commit to protecting our community from being consumed by this tension – especially by criminal activities that divide us and keep us from our shared goals of peace and safety.
 
What does this mean? I believe it means saying, “not here, not anymore” to provocateurs who are looking for a fight and advancing a white supremacist ideology. I believe it means arresting and prosecuting individuals who mace nonviolent counter-protesters from their vehicles or throw pipe bombs in our neighborhoods. I believe it means holding individuals accountable when they intentionally seek to injure police officers, break windows, or commit arson. And, I believe it means holding police officers accountable for confrontational and violent crowd control tactics.
 
We must work for peace AND fight for justice wherever it needs to happen.
 
To work for peace and justice successfully, we need to be clear about what’s happening on the streets of Portland every night – even though it’s too complicated to distill into one simple sound bite. For instance, I’ve been disturbed by the number of times I’ve heard police officials and other elected officials defining these protests against racism and police abuse as universally violent. Such a broad brush is simplistic and does not help deescalate these nightly encounters. Unfortunately, there have been too many attempts to use the reprehensible actions of a few to dismiss a genuine grassroots movement and dehumanize all protestors as violent or destructive anarchists. And, this rhetoric has too often been used as an excuse for the indiscriminate use of force against protesters, the majority of whom are not vandals and are not doing anything violent.
 
People should be held responsible for destructive, dangerous, and violent acts – regardless of their job or their politics. Police officers should be held responsible for destructive, dangerous, and violent acts. At this critical moment, they’re not being held sufficiently accountable and therefore the protests continue.
 
A call for peace must not let our eyes stray from the institutional problems within police departments around the country and at home. I will continue to support policing reform efforts at the Legislature and will continue to work with my colleagues to move forward with additional statewide policy changes. We’ve made real progress in the last four months, and we must go further.
 
I want solutions, not rhetoric and finger-pointing. I think that’s what Black Lives Matter activists want, too. I encourage you to read this article by Molly Harbarger about the overuse of the charge “interfering with a police officer.” Let’s fix this. I urge police departments across Oregon to adhere to the new use of force law we passed last month, and not wait until next year to implement it. Let’s get started with more responsible law enforcement now. The protests will end when we see more change.


To read past newsletters, you can go to this link. For up to date information, please check this link to the Oregon Health Authority where regular updates are posted: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/News-Releases.aspx

Please email me at Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov if you have specific concerns that have not been addressed by the OHA. Our office will do all we can to help and protect all Oregonians.

Thank you for reading! We will get through this together.

Best,

Tina

Tina Kotek

State Representative
House District 44
Speaker of the House

email: Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov I phone: 503-986-1200
address: 900 Court St NE, H-269, Salem, OR 97301
website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/kotek