September 16th COVID-19 and Wildfire Update

September 16, 2020

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

Today’s newsletter is again a mixture of information about COVID and the wildfires. Again, new COVID case numbers are relatively low, but so are the number of reported tests.  We see a big jump in new hospitalizations, but that may be the result of delayed reporting from the hospitals.

The firefighters at the Department of Forestry report that a lot of progress has been made in containing a number of fires, and several cities have seen their evacuation orders lifted or lowered.

On the air quality front, most of Oregon is still suffering from smoke.  But for those fortunate to be living or staying on the Coast, marine winds have moved most of the smoke in those areas.  The rest of the state unfortunately isn’t there yet, but relief is promised for the next day or two for much of the state.  Here’s an update to the state smoke advisories.

Again, please let me know if you have questions about any of the information in this newsletter.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• Positive Cases: OHA reports that 176 additional Oregonians have tested positive. The cumulative total for those testing positive is 28,399.
• Total Tests: The number of reported tests has increased by 3,197. The cumulative total is now 619,822.
• Ratio: The percentage of positive test results in Oregon is 5.5%.  The national ratio today is 6.0%.
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 2 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 521.
• Hospitalized: OHA reports an additional 27 COVID hospitalizations. The total of COVID hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic is 2,319.
• 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 19 new presumed positives today.  The total number of presumed positives is currently 1,451.
• Other Hospital Information:
  • Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 172 (17 more than yesterday). Of those, 114 have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 143 (14 fewer than yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 650 (5 fewer than yesterday).
  • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 39 (5 more than yesterday).
  • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 15 (4 more than yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 777 (5 fewer than yesterday).
• Dashboards
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 88,574,524 (665,622 up from yesterday).
  • Positive Tests: 6,597,783 (up 40,021 from yesterday.)
  • Deaths: 188,802 (up 1,202 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.
• Additional Brief Updates:
  • Some Oregonians affected by the wildfires may find themselves needing to change their health Insurance providers as a result of displacement and disruption. Legislators received notice today that a Special Enrollment Period for changing carriers has been ordered as part of the Disaster Declaration.  You can find out more about that here.
  • The Governor issued a press release today on the Emergency Disaster Declaration approved by the President yesterday afternoon, which I described in yesterday’s newsletter. Here it is.
  • As I mentioned yesterday, arduous work is ahead of us clearing and restoring Oregon highways. ODOT is providing regular updates on that process.  You can read more about it here.
  • The Governor announced today that Oregon has joined with California, Washington, Colorado, and Nevada (our partners in the COVID Western States Pact) in a pilot project to test out a new COVID-exposure app. The pilot project will test the Exposure Notification Express mobile application developed by Google and Apple. For those who voluntarily choose to use the exposure notification technology, the app confidentially notifies individuals who may have been exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus. Users must opt in to the technology. You can read more about the pilot project 
  • OHA just released this week’s COVID Weekly Report as I was about to send this off for publishing, so I won’t be able to include my usual summary and analysis today. I will tomorrow.  In a nutshell, the report tells us that new case counts continued to go down last week, but so did testing, and as a result test positivity went up.  Sadly, so did the number of new hospitalizations and deaths. Here is the report.

Wednesday Wildfire Update:  A Good Day Overall

There was no press conference or general briefing for legislators today, but I’ve been able to get updates from the Department of Forestry and others.

Firefighting continues to make progress on nearly all fronts today.  Firefighters are making progress on fire line construction with help from the higher humidity, cooler temperatures, and (ironically) the smoke (which helps lower temperatures) have helped to moderate the progress of the fires.  The smoke obviously creates other problems, notably our ongoing terrible air quality and the inability of aircraft to be used in the northern parts of the state.

The firefighting coordinators are expecting real rain to move in NW Oregon tomorrow and Friday.  As I mentioned yesterday, these storms may contain lightning, but the expectation is that the benefit of the rain will more than outweigh the risk of lightning and prevent new fires from starting.  We’ll see.  In addition, the accompanying winds should help move the smoke out of the valleys at last.

For maps and details on the individual fires, I’d again direct you to to OEM’s State of Oregon Fires and Hotspots Dashboard.

As was hoped, the fire lines in the Clackamas County and Marion County fires held overnight, and a number of evacuation notices were able to be lifted in those areas. This afternoon Clackamas County removed all evacuation notices for Oregon City, Canby and Sandy and reduced Molalla from a Level 2 evacuation warning to a Level 1, “Be ready” notice. Estacada, which was within a half mile of the fire line last week, was reduced from a Level 3 “Go now” evacuation order to Level 2.

Some remote areas of the county, close to the fire, remain on a Level 3 notice, and the Mt. Hood National Forest is still closed.

The Beachie Creek Fire in Marion County is now 20% contained, and Scotts Mill has been downgraded to a Level 1 notice.  A preliminary assessment of the damage from that fire shows a total of 1,288 structures destroyed, including 470 homes.  So far, total of 1,616 homes are reported destroyed statewide.

Overall in the state, eight people are known to have been killed, with 12 more confirmed missing.

More than 6,000 firefighters (not counting municipal firefighters or volunteers) are currently deployed around the state.

The Governor visited the Beachie Creek fire line today and had this to say:  “In my meetings today at the Beachie Creek Fire, again and again I was awed by the brave, dedicated, and empathetic people who have been doing anything and everything it takes to help their fellow Oregonians.”

Here again are some other resources that I would recommend:

• Again, for one-stop information about fires, firefighting response, smoke levels and much more, you can find a variety of Wildfire-related Resources at the Governor’s Wildfire Website.
• Senator Merkley’s office has compiled an excellent set of information and resources for us.
• If you want to find out the current status of smoke conditions in your area and the prognosis for the next day, here’s a comprehensive wildfire smoke dashboard. You’ll see that some of the cities with hazardous air today will improve to “only” be “unhealthy” tomorrow.  Here in Portland, you’ll see that tomorrow our air quality is projected to have moved from “Hazardous” to merely “Very Unhealthy.”
• If you haven’t yet signed up for notifications on the evacuation status of your area, here’s a compendium of links to do so for the various parts of the state.
• For those of you in Multnomah County, the County has set up a wildfire page with regular updates on closures, evacuation status, etc.
• Here are regular updates on road conditions from ODOT.regular updates on road conditions from ODOT.
• The Office of Emergency Management provides regular updates at the OEM Twitter page and at the OEM Facebook page.

 More Wildfire News Items for You

• Oregonian reporters did another comprehensive survey of the different fires today.
• Curious about what exactly firefighters do while working on a fire line? Today’s New York Times provides a close look at the process of creating fire breaks and fire lines.  The process hasn’t changed all that much over the years.
• The Medford Mail Tribune has a story on a new effort to match up those needing evacuation housing and those with room in their homes.
• And for today’s example of good journalism, I’d recommend this Zach Urness story about a man who spent the night sheltering from the fire in the middle of the Little North Santiam River.

New Paid Time Off Payments for Those In Quarantine Begins Today

The Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) and the Department of Revenue are rolling out a new program to support workers who don’t otherwise receive paid time off but have been obliged to quarantine or isolate themselves as a result of exposure to COVID-19.  Those who qualify will receive a $120 per-day payment for up to 10 working days ($1,200 total) for the time they are required quarantine.

Funding for this came from the Legislature, using $30 million in federal Coronavirus-response allocations.

You’ll find all the details, the requirements, and the application links here.

Because the available funds are limited, the program is not available retroactively.  It’s open to workers who are currently quarantined and those quarantined going forward.  It can only be used once.

Where Are Today’s New Cases?

the overall number of new cases is 195.  Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Benton (1)

Clackamas (10)

Clatsop (2)

Coos (2)

Deschutes (4)

Douglas (2)

Hood River (1)

Jackson (15)

Jefferson (5)

Klamath (14)

Lane (15)

Linn (1)

Malheur (17)

Marion (23)

Morrow (3)

Multnomah (32)

Polk (3)

Tillamook (1)

Umatilla (2)

Union (1)

Wallowa (6)

Wasco (2)

Washington (33)

Yamhill (4)

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 520th COVID-19 death is a 70-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on July 9 and died on Sept. 8 at OHSU.

Oregon’s 521st COVID-19 death is a 79-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Aug. 4 and died on Sept. 10 at his 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