September 1st COVID-19 Update

September 1, 2020

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

Hard to believe it’s September already.  (And, yes, hard to believe I’m still doing this newsletter every day . . .)

In today’s newsletter you’ll find the weekly testing report, a report on the first day of legislative hearings on Unemployment Benefits in Oregon, and a number of other items, along with various COVID metrics. 

The COVID numbers ticked up somewhat today, pushing up our positivity rates.  We unfortunately learned that the death rate has risen again, with six Oregonians being reported, including a 27-year-old man from Washington County.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• Positive Cases: OHA reported today that 236 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID. The cumulative total for those testing positive is now 25,639.
• Total Tests: The number of reported tests has increased by 4,575. The cumulative total is now 560,493.
• Ratio: The percentage of positive cases in Oregon is 5.2% of total results. The national percentage today is 6.1%. 
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 6 additional deaths due to the coronavirus today. You can read more about the Oregonians we lost further down in the newsletter.  The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now at 465.
• Hospitalized: OHA reports that an additional 13 Oregonians have been hospitalized for COVID. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID is at 2,162.
• 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 7 new presumed positive cases today.  The cumulative number of those presumed positive is 1,307.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 132 (4 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 91 have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 148 (148 fewer than yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 749 (73 fewer than yesterday).
  • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 49 (6 more than yesterday).
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 24 (same as yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 769 (20 fewer than yesterday).
• Dashboards
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 78,447,059 (up 698,161 from yesterday).
  • Positive Tests: 6,041,860 (up 42,401 from yesterday).
  • Deaths: 176,624 (up 1,022 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 Governor today extended the pandemic state of emergency through Nov. 3. It’s the third time she has extended the state of emergency by 60 days. She stated that she had hoped that this would not still be necessary by now, but unfortunately conditions on the ground do not yet allow her to do so.
  • Yesterday I reported incorrectly that Governor Brown had issued an executive order today extending the deadline for the moratorium on evictions until the end of this calendar year.  If you looked at the actual order, you saw that her moratorium order was actually not about evictions but about foreclosures. She is still considering an order extending the evictions moratorium but still has a couple of weeks to do so.
  • Speaking of an evictions moratorium, we learned today that the White House is enhancing and extending a nationwide ban on evictions under the authority of the CDC for the remainder of the year. The Governor’s Office is studying the new federal order to see if it provides Oregon renters and landlords with the clarity and protections they need.  You can read about the new federal program here.
  • The Salem Reporter has an article on a recent report on school reopening metrics by the Institute for Disease Modeling, the Washington firm that Oregon uses to model progress of COVID in Oregon. It suggests that Oregon’s use of the 10-per-100K infection threshold may be overly rigorous.  You can read the Salem Reporter article here.
  • And here are the latest school reopening metrics for each county.

Legislative Public Hearings This Week

Two legislative committees are meeting this week, and they include opportunities for public testimony.

The Senate Committee on Labor and Business is holding a series of hearings on September 1^st , 2^nd , and 3^rd on the problems and challenges around the Oregon Employment Department. 

They met today for nearly four hours to hear a detailed presentation from Acting Director David Gerstenfeld on how the unemployment system works, the extraordinary challenges faced by the agency as a result of the pandemic, what has gone wrong with our computer and telephone systems, and prospects going forward. They also had the opportunity to ask him many questions about the computer system and other problems. 

We did also learn that every state is more or less in the same situation as Oregon in experiencing long delays in getting benefits out to claimants, for a variety of reasons.

You can watch/listen to the hearing, which is now archived.

You can also check out a useful timeline of events related to unemployment in Oregon since the beginning of March with links to relevant documents.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) will be another opportunity for committee members to hear from and question the Director, this time more specifically about the CARES Act. Thursday will be an opportunity for the public to share concerns and suggestions via oral public testimony.  The above link will take you to a page that explains how to provide oral testimony as well as written testimony, which will be taken all three days.

The Joint Committee on Transparent Policing and Use of Force Reform will continue its work on developing legislation to reform policing practices in our state on Thursday, September 3.  Prior to the last special session, they were working on six concepts, two of which were finalized and passed.  Many of these were attempts to build on and make necessary improvements to bills that were passed during the first special session.  The hearing will also introduce new concepts being developed for the 2021 legislative session, including one related to qualified immunity.  You can find the most current forms of all the legislative concepts under Meeting Materials.  Updated versions will be continually posted, so keep checking.

The hearing on Thursday will also be an opportunity to take public testimony, and the above link will show you how to do that in written form and orally.

Update on Testing in Oregon

OHA released its Weekly Testing Report today, which showed that as of August 29, Oregon’s cumulative positive testing rate since the beginning of the pandemic is 4.6% of people tested. The positivity rate for just last week (August 23-29) was just 4.4%.  

According to the testing report, just 26,550 people were tested last week.  However, this number will rise as test results are reported to OHA.  Tests are added to the week in which they were collected, but only once the results come in. 

Thus, last week’s report showed that just 24,117 tests were taken in the week ending August 22.  As you’ll see below, that number has now been adjusted up to 31,317. As a result, last week’s positivity rate has been adjusted downward from 5.2% to 5.0%.  Presumably, this week’s positivity rate of 4.4% will eventually turn out to be lower.

Even with these adjustments, our testing numbers remain low.  Again, this is due in part to the ongoing lack of testing supplies, ongoing lack of federal testing support, and the need to send many of our specimens to national labs for processing.  The turnaround times for those national labs remain very long.

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 243. Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Baker (4)

Benton (4)

Clackamas (26)

Clatsop (1)

Deschutes (1)

Douglas (1)

Hood River (2)

Jackson (10)

Jefferson (4)

Josephine (4)

Lane (9)

Lincoln (2)

Malheur (10)

Marion (39)

Morrow (2)

Multnomah (50)

Polk (4)

Umatilla (15)

Union (1)

Washington (42)

Yamhill (12)

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 460^th COVID-19 death is a 41-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on Aug. 7 and died on Aug. 23, at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.

Oregon’s 461^st COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old woman in Linn County who tested positive on Aug. 24 and died on Aug. 28, at Samaritan Albany General Hospital.

Oregon’s 462^nd COVID-19 death is a 66-year-old man in Umatilla County who tested positive on July 31 and died on Aug. 28, at Good Shepherd Hospital.

Oregon’s 463^rd COVID-19 death is a 27-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on July 31 and died on Aug. 28, in his residence.

Oregon’s 464^th COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Aug. 22 and died on Aug. 27. Location of death is being confirmed.

Oregon’s 465^th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Aug. 7 and died on Aug. 28, in her residence.

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:

• 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