November 6th COVID-19 Update

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin at 11/06/2020 09:19 PM PST
Michael Dembrow

November 6, 2020

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

Though a bit lower than yesterday’s record case count, and reflecting a somewhat lower positivity rate thanks to increased testing, today’s COVID results remain at record-high levels. This is true nationally as well as in Oregon.  In addition, the number of new COVID hospitalizations is now surging, the inevitable result of the very high number of cases we’ve been seeing for the last two weeks.  The number of ICU beds still available for use is declining, with barely 10% remaining in the Portland metro area.  Additional capacity can be added, but it won’t be easy.

The Governor has announced a series of measures designed to curb these trends. You can read about those further down in the newsletter.  For the most part, they involve voluntary efforts by individuals in certain counties to reduce their social interactions for the time being.  They focus on the period leading up to Thanksgiving, but they include a request for people to be extremely cautious about whom they include in their Thanksgiving festivities, urging us to restrict our social interactions to those in their immediate households.  The goal is to get through this Thanksgiving holiday season without individuals inadvertently passing on the disease and seeing our case numbers explode further, as so often seems to happen during holidays.

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything you read here.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • Positive Cases: OHA reports today that 740 additional Oregonians have tested positive for COVID-19. The cumulative total for those testing positive since the beginning of the pandemic is 46,120.
  • Total Tests: The number of reported COVID test results has increased by 8,546. The cumulative total of tests since the beginning of the pandemic is now 895,114.
  • Ratio: The percentage of total tests that have been positive since Friday is 8.7%.  The national ratio today is 8.2%.
  • Deaths: I’m sorry to have to report 6 additional COVID deaths today. You can read about the Oregonians we lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 716.
  • Hospitalized: OHA reports 44 new COVID hospitalizations. I believe that this is the highest number we’ve seen in a day.  The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID is now 3,378.
  • 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 30 new presumed positive cases today.  The total number of those counted as presumed positives is 2,488.
  • Other Hospital Information:
    • Patients Currently with COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 266 (7 more than yesterday). Of those, 217 have already received a positive test back.
    • Available ICU Beds: 156 (12 fewer than yesterday)
    • Other Available Beds: 626 (28 more than yesterday).
    • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 62 (3 fewer than yesterday).
    • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 27 (1 more than yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 748 (7 more than yesterday).
  • Dashboard:
  • Today’s National Numbers:
  • Additional Brief Updates:
    • Legislators just received an update from the University of Oregon on the effort to contain the spread of COVID on campus. Despite the surge in cases overall in the state and the nation, the number of new cases in the university community appear to be in decline.
    • Meeting materials for the Legislature’s Emergency Board meeting on Monday have now been posted. They include information about the specific allocations that will be proposed.  Here is the meeting agenda page, which will include the link to the video for the meeting, and the meeting materials page.

Governor Calls for a “Pause” in Five Counties

Today, during her press conference, accompanied by medical advisors, Gov. Brown instituted a two week “pause” in the relaxing of COVID restrictions that we’ve been experiencing for the last few months.  This reimposition of stricter standards does not apply to the state as a whole for now, but focuses on five counties where we’ve been experiencing large numbers of new COVID cases.  This is an effort to slow down the recent spikes in new cases and hospitalizations.  It takes effect on November 11 and continues until November 25, the day before Thanksgiving.

You can find details in the press release following the conference.

The affected counties are Malheur, Marion, Multnomah, Jackson, and Umatilla.  Five additional counties – Washington, Baker, Union, Clackamas, and Linn – are close to the COVID-19 thresholds and may need to be added to the two-week pause list if things don’t improve there.

The pause measures in those five counties include:

  • Urging all businesses to mandate work from home to the greatest extent possible.
  • Pausing long-term care facility visits to protect staff and residents.
  • Reducing maximum restaurant capacity to 50 people (including customers and staff) for indoor dining, with a maximum party size of six. Continuing to encourage outdoor dining and take out.
  • Reducing other indoor activity maximums capacity to 50 people (for example: gyms, fitness organizations/studios, bowling alleys, ice rinks, indoor sports, pools, museums).
  • Limiting social gatherings to our own households, or no more than 6 people if the gathering includes those from outside our households, and reducing the frequency of those social gatherings (significantly in a two-week period), and keeping the same 6 people in our social gathering circle.

You’ll see that the Governor is not issuing these changes as mandates where mandates could lead to criminal penalties.  She is hoping—for now—that businesses and individuals will take them seriously and temporarily change their behavior in a supportive and voluntary effort to turn things around.  If these efforts don’t work, and we find ourselves with increasing case counts and a compromised hospital system, further restrictions (including involuntary measures) will obviously need to be the next step.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Friday Wildfire Recovery/Response Update

We’d like to think that fire season is over by now.  Indeed, ODF has not reported any changes in wildfire containment levels among the large fires that have been burning since Labor Day.  However, it does report that it is fighting a new one in Eastern Oregon: the Leslie Gulch Fire, which began yesterday afternoon and has burned 4,500 acres already.

You can find maps and up-to-the-minute details on the individual fires at OEM’s State of Oregon Fires and Hotspots Dashboard.

Here is today’s update from the OEM on the state’s wildfire recovery efforts. Here are the updated statistics regarding Human Impacts:

  • The number of fatalities (9) and missing persons (1) remains the same.
  • The number of residences reported destroyed remains at 4,026. More than 1,400 structures other than residences have also been destroyed.
  • According to the Red Cross, the number of Oregonians in emergency housing has continued to go down slightly over the last few days. 1,066 Oregonians now remain in emergency housing, but all are now in hotels/motels and other short-term settings.  There are no longer any evacuees living in shelters, either in RVs and tents or in indoor congregate shelters.
  • The number of Oregonians who have registered with FEMA for individual assistance has continued to increase and is currently at 24,415. FEMA has already approved for $23.74 million in assistance grants.
  • Still, if you know of anyone who has NOT yet registered, please direct them the following:

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 for today is 770. Half are from the Portland Tri-County region and half from elsewhere in the state.  Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Baker (4)

Benton (17).

Clackamas (13)

Clatsop (5)

Columbia (5)

Coos (6)

Crook (5)

Curry (6)

Deschutes (38)

Douglas (13)

Grant (7)

Harney (5)

Hood River (1)

Jackson (83)

Jefferson (7)

Josephine (5)

Klamath (5)

Lake (1)

Lane (40)

Lincoln (3)

Linn (10)

Malheur (16)

Marion (77)

Morrow (4)

Multnomah (199)

Polk (15)

Umatilla (37)

Union (8)

Washington (120)

Yamhill (15)

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 711th COVID-19 death is a 97-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Nov. 3 and died on Nov. 3, at Providence St Vincent Medical Center.

Oregon’s 712th COVID-19 death is a 59-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Nov. 4 and died on Nov. 4, at Adventist Medical Center.

Oregon’s 713th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Nov. 4 and died on Nov. 4, at her residence.

Oregon’s 714th COVID-19 death is a 95-year-old woman in Marion County who tested positive on Oct. 22 and died on Nov. 4, at her residence.

Oregon’s 715th COVID-19 death is an 82-year-old woman in Wasco County who tested positive on Sept. 18 and died on Nov. 1, at her residence.

Oregon’s 716th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old man in Washington County who became symptomatic on Oct. 9 after close contact with a confirmed case and died on Nov. 4, at Providence St Vincent Medical Center.

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 (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