November 8th COVID-19 Update

Michael Dembrow

November 8, 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.

Since it’s Sunday, you’ll find only partial reporting on some of the metrics tracking coronavirus in Oregon.  Instead of giving us the positive test results alone, over the weekend OHA combines those numbers with the relatively small number of those who are presumed to be positive based on their symptoms and close proximity to someone who has tested positive, but whose test results have not yet come back.  But it still gives us a good idea of what’s going on. 

Today’s report from OHA confirms that we are in the middle of a big surge in COVID cases, as is most of the country.  Though today’s reported case numbers are down a little today, they are still the second highest since the beginning of the pandemic.  More troubling is that these very high numbers cannot be attributed to more testing:  today’s positivity rate—14.1%--is the highest it’s been since the beginning of the pandemic.  It’s five full percentage points higher than it was a week ago.

We don’t get hospitalization numbers over the weekend, so we won’t know what the rate of increase is till tomorrow.  Deaths are reported, and there’s a glimmer of good news there--the number of newly-reported deaths has declined to 1 today (down from 13 yesterday).  Having said that, it’s not unusual to see lower deaths reported on Sunday; we see the same phenomenon on the national level.

As I’ve been doing on Sundays, I’m also providing updated information about how COVID is affecting people of different ages.  We see the same trends as in past weeks: COVID cases are most prevalent in younger people, but they tend to be less likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease.  When it’s passed on to older people, however, COVID becomes much more dangerous.

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

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • Positive Cases: OHA reports that 874 additional Oregonians have tested positive or are presumed positive (see below for definition) for COVID. OHA does not report positive test results alone over the weekend. I’ll be able to readjust the numbers on Monday to remove the presumed positives. The cumulative total for those testing positive and presumed positive since the beginning of the pandemic is 50,448.
  • Total Tests: The number of reported tests has increased by 6,202. Today’s increase in total results also includes presumed positives in the total results, so may be a little high. I’ll readjust the numbers on Monday.  The cumulative total is now 909,301.
  • Ratio: The percentage of total tests that are positive today is 14.1%.  The national ratio today is 9.4%.
  • Deaths: I’m sorry to have to report 1 additional COVID death today. You can read about the Oregonian we lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 730.
  • Hospitalized: OHA does not report on hospitalizations over the weekend. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID thus remains at 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.
  • Other Hospital Information: : OHA DOES NOT REPORT hospitalization information over the weekend, so the numbers below are the same as Friday’s.
    • 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:
    • The OHA is reporting that thanks to the increasing availability of rapid tests, people who are experiencing COVID symptoms or who have been near people who have tested positive should get a test. Here is more information and a testing site locator.
    • During the Governor’s briefing on Friday, the OHA’s Public Health Director provided a couple of examples of ways in which small family/friend get-togethers led to the virus getting into workplaces and long-term care facilities and spreading dramatically from there. The Oregonian has an article today that builds off of these examples to help explain how COVID spreads in our communities.
    • The AP has a story today showing how COVID is once again surging in nursing homes across the country.  It includes impacts here in Oregon.

Legislature’s Emergency Board Meets Tomorrow

The E-Board will be meeting on Monday at 1 pm for a series of allocations related to COVID and wildfire response.  In some cases they involve dollars coming out of our state General Fund; in other cases they are disbursements from federal Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF).  Here are the nine items on the meeting agenda at this point.

  • Project Turnkey Statewide Pandemic and Homelessness Response:  This is a $35 million allocation to allow local governments and nonprofits to purchase hotels, motels, or other units in order to provide places to house those needing COVID quarantine shelter, and then to help house the homeless. At its last meeting the EBoard approved a $30 million allocation for Project Turnkey focused on wildfire shelter but put off its approval for this one.  Now we can expect approval of this program as well.
  • COVID-19 Testing Capacity Budget Report: This item is in some ways a routine acceptance of a report on how testing dollars are being spent. However, it does include a change from the proposal that the EBoard approved in an earlier meeting.  You may remember that money was being allocated to OSU and UO to develop higher testing capacity to help us meet our testing needs.  In this revision UO will be receiving less of an allocation, with funds being shifted over to OHSU for a new mobile unit.
  • FEMA Reimbursement: Makes it possible for $75 million in Corona Relief Fund expenditures for Personal Protective Equipment to be paid for through FEMA. It will allow those federal dollars to go further and get more PPE to frontline workers. It will free up CRF dollars to pay for Items #4, 5, and #6.
  • Oregon Worker Relief Fund:  Allocates an additional $20 million of federal CRF funds to go to the Worker Relief Fund, providing support for unemployed workers who are ineligible for Unemployment Benefits.

You can watch the hearing in real time or after the fact by going to the committee meeting agenda page.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the work of the E-Board.

Looking at Age Metrics

Here again are this week’s statewide case, hospitalization, and death metrics by age.  Here is updated information as of November 6.  The percentages for each category have again not really moved much. You’ll see again that younger people have come to dominate the category of new cases: 71% of all cases so far have been in Oregonians below younger than 50.

However, effects of the disease become much more severe when it is transmitted to older people. 71% of COVID hospitalizations are among those OVER the age of 50.  Deaths remain dominated by those above the age of 70 (more than three-fourths of all deaths), though we continue to see losses among people in their 50s and younger.

Those who eventually die of the disease are increasingly to be found in the 80-and-over category.  More than half of all deaths are now in this category. This may be due to improvements in COVID treatments that are making more of a difference with younger patients. 

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Sunday Wildfire Recovery/Response Update

No changes to report on the remaining big fires, including the new Leslie Gulch fire in Eastern Oregon.  You can find maps and up-to-the-minute details on the individual fires at OEM’s State of Oregon Fires and Hotspots Dashboard.

  • We don’t receive updates from the Office of Emergency Management over the weekend.  Below again are the latest statistics regarding Human Impacts as of Friday.  However, for the very latest numbers, OEM is now maintaining a real-time Wildfire and Recovery Tracker that will give you up-to-the-moment statistics on a variety of metrics related to recovery efforts. 
  • 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 874. More than half are again from the Portland Tri-County region. Here is the breakdown by county for today:

Benton (5)

Clackamas (127)

Clatsop (5)

Columbia (6)

Coos (4)

Crook (1)

Curry (2)

Deschutes (23)

Douglas (15)

Grant (5)

Harney (1)

Hood River (6)

Jackson (67)

Jefferson (1)

Josephine (9)

Klamath (6)

Lane (57)

Linn (5)

Malheur (13)

Marion (112)

Morrow (8)

Multnomah (216)

Polk (17)

Tillamook (1)

Umatilla (25)

Union (9)

Wallowa (1)

Wasco (1)

Washington (104)

Yamhill (22)

And the Death

Oregon’s 730th COVID-19 death is an 82-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on Oct. 19 and died on Nov. 5 at his residence.

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