December 13th COVID-19 Update

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin at 12/13/2020 09:19 PM PST
Michael Dembrow

December 13, 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.

Today’s reported COVID cases and reported deaths are lower than they have been this week.  That may be good news, but it may simply be because it’s Sunday and reporting is down. We’re seeing the same thing at the national level.  If so, we’ll see the numbers rise again to make up for it over the next few days.

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.  This week I’ve added a chart showing just how likely it is for older Oregonians to be hospitalized or die of the disease.

You’ll also find information from last week’s Weekly Report and the schedule for this coming week’s House committee hearings, which begin tomorrow morning.

Please stay safe, and let me know if you have any questions about today’s newsletter. 

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • New COVID Cases: OHA reports 1,048 new COVID cases today.  This count is a combination of positive test results and those who are presumed positive (see definition below).  The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 93,853.
  • Positive Test Results: OHA reports 1,420 positive test results. The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is 132,241.
  • Total Tests: OHA reports an additional 19,410 test results. Our cumulative total of tests is 2,287,574.
  • Positivity Rate: The average positivity rate for Oregon today is 7.3%.  The national ratio today is 10.7%.
  • 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 1,155.
  • Hospitalized: OHA does not report on hospitalizations over the weekend. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID thus remains at 5,395.
  • Presumptive Cases: OHA is including “presumptive COVID-19 cases” in its 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 comprehensive 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): 621 (3 more than yesterday). Of those, 576 (same as yesterday) have already received a positive test back.
    • Available ICU Beds: 131 (5 fewer than yesterday)
    • Other Available Beds: 574 (37 fewer than yesterday).
    • ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 136 (2 fewer than yesterday).
    • COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 61 (1 more than yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 762 (9 more than yesterday).
  • Dashboards:
  • Today’s National Numbers:
    • Total Tests: 218,907,578 (up 1,750,082 from yesterday).
    • Total Cases: 16,143,319 (up 186,884 from yesterday.)
    • Deaths: 291,017 (up 1,482 from yesterday).
    • These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can visit that site here.
  • Additional Brief Updates:
    • The Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, tasked with assessing the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer COVID vaccine, has just sent its recommendations to the Governors of Oregon, Washington, California, and Nevada. They find the vaccine safe and efficacious, and   encourage the Governors to “avoid any undue delay in providing access to the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.”  You can read comments from all four governors here.
    • The Associated Press has an article today with more information on the side-effects (generally mild or moderate) of the Pfizer vaccine and Americans’ willingness to take it (women much less than men, Black Americans much less than White Americans).

Looking at Age Metrics

Here again are this week’s statewide case, hospitalization, and death metrics by age.  Here is updated information as of December 4.  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. 72% 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 many losses among people in their 60s and younger. 

I’ve mentioned in the past that 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 in this category. However, last week we saw a slight reduction in the percentage of deaths in this category in favor of those 70-79 years old.

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And finally, here’s a table taken from the OHA Weekly COVID Report.  It combines COVID information with population numbers for each age group.  The table allows us to see the cumulative number of COVID infections for each age group on a per-100K basis, It also give us the percentages of those in each group who have tested positive for COVID and go on to require hospitalization and/or eventually die of the disease.  Again, it’s a stark reminder of the serious impact that this disease has on older people.

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Info from Last Week’s OHA Weekly COVID Report

OHA released its WEEKLY COVID REPORT on Wednesday. It is again a very comprehensive snapshot of different aspects of transmission of the disease in Oregon over the past week or so.  It confirms what we’ve been seeing in our daily reports:  we are seeing record rates of transmission in Oregon, increases in test positivity, hospitalizations, and deaths.  It continues to show ongoing disproportionality among racial and ethnic groups.

Here are some of OHA’s broad observations of where we are now, based on data from November 30 to December 6:

  • We see once again a big increase in the number of new cases. Last week OHA reported a new record 10,355 new cases of COVID-19 infection, a 14% increase from the previous week’s 9,100.  This is the seventh consecutive week of new record highs.
  • The 85,788 cases reported to date mean that 2% of Oregonians have been reported as having had COVID-19. (This of course doesn’t include those that have gone unreported, most likely three times that number.)
  • The number of COVID tests increased to 170,934 (up from the previous week’s 141,356).
  • The positivity rate declined last week from 8.6% to 8.1%.
  • The number of new COVID hospitalizations rose again last week to new record levels, from 398 to 494, an average of 71 per day (up from 57 per day). That’s a 24% increase.
  • The number of COVID deaths last week increased from 86 to 133 died in association with COVID-19—up from 86 the previous week.
  • The cumulative death rate since the beginning of the pandemic jumped to 1,045 on December 6. Of the 85,788 COVID cases reported to date, the fatality rate is again 1.2%.  Among the oldest age group (80+), the fatality rate is much higher: 17%, or nearly 1 in 5, of those who test positive for the virus will die of COVID-19.

The report again provides information about disease symptoms and risk factors; along with racial/ethnic/age/gender demographics. It provides an update on people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and the number of COVID patients at various hospitals around the state.

It no longer includes information on outbreaks.  That information is now included in a separate Outbreak Report.

Racial/Ethnic

The report again demonstrates significant disparities among racial groups.  You can see this in the charts below, with data that I’ve taken from the November 25, report, the December 2 report, and from this report.  It allows you to see at a glance the proportion of case counts within different racial groups and ethnic groups (technically, “Hispanic” is not a race and is counted as an ethnic group, with numbers from a separate chart). 

To help you understand the racial/ethnic data reported in the weekly report, I’ve also created a chart that shows the hospitalization and death rates per 100K population, along with the infection rates per-100K population for each racial/ethnic group.

You’ll see again how much higher the case rates per 100,000 are for most racial/ethnic groups compared to White Oregonians. Black Oregonians are 2.6 times more likely to contract the disease than are White Oregonians, Native Americans 3.2 times more likely, Latinx Oregonians are 4.4 times more likely, and Pacific Islanders are now 5.2 times more likely. The differences, while still large, have continued to go down slightly from week to week.  The differential rate for Pacific Islanders, while very large, is half what it was during the summer.

You’ll also again see that hospitalization rates among those who have contracted the disease are quite a bit lower for Latinx, and somewhat higher for Pacific Islanders than for the population of White Oregonians.  Among those who have contracted the disease, the percentage who ultimately die of it is higher for Whites than for people of color.

However, you’ll also see in the final chart that when examined as a proportion of their populations in Oregon, the hospitalization and death rates for Blacks, Native Americans,  Latinx, and especially Pacific-Islander Oregonians continue to be disproportionally high. (The hospitalization rate for Pacific Islanders is more than 7.5 times the rate for Whites.)  It helps us to see why it’s so important that special outreach needs to be made to members of these racial/ethnic groups.

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The weekly report also includes graphs showing how Public Health agencies are doing in contact tracing for different racial and ethnic groups.  For the most part, the rate of follow-up interviews with Oregonians of color continue to be comparable to the rate with White Oregonians (actually, higher among Latinx Oregonians).  Those attempts continue to be less successful for Black Oregonians.

House Committee Meetings This Week

Tomorrow marks the final week of “Leg Days,” where legislative committees meet (remotely for now) to hear updates on issues of concern and introduce the first round of bills for the next session.  This week is devoted to House hearings.  Unlike the Senate hearings last week, which lasted 3 hours, most of the House committees will have two meetings each, each one lasting 2 hours.  In addition to the House committees, one Joint Committee and one Task Force will be meeting this week as well.

Here's the calendar for this week, with committees listed in alphabetical order (joint committee and task force at the end).  The links will take you to the agenda, meeting materials, and meeting video for each hearing.

Agriculture and Land Use

Behavioral Health

Business and Labor

Economic Development

Education

Energy and Environment

Health Care

Housing

Human Services

Natural Resources

Revenue

Rules

Veterans and Emergency Preparedness

Joint Committee on the I-5 Bridge

Task Force on Access to Quality Affordable Child Childcare

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 reported for is 1,048.  Here is the breakdown of reported cases by county for today:

Baker (4)

Benton (21)

Clackamas (112)

Clatsop (3)

Columbia (15)

Coos (11)

Crook (7)

Curry (14)

Deschutes (39)

Douglas (20)

Hood River (13)

Jackson (90)

Jefferson (17)

Josephine (11)

Klamath (28)

Lake (1)

Lane (88)

Lincoln (12)

Linn (24)

Malheur (4)

Marion (150)

Morrow (4)

Multnomah (172)

Polk (15)

Tillamook (1)

Umatilla (36)

Union (2)

Wasco (9)

Washington (108)

Yamhill (17)

And the Deaths

Note from OHA:  On Dec. 7, OHA reported in error Oregon’s 1,036th COVID-19 death as a 77-year-old woman in Linn County who tested positive Nov. 20. The woman has not died and the number of COVID-19 deaths in Oregon has been adjusted to accommodate this error.

Oregon’s 1,150th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old woman in Jackson County who tested positive Nov. 10 and died Dec. 11 at Providence Medford Medical Center.

Oregon’s 1,151st COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old man in Josephine County who tested positive Dec. 4 and died Dec. 10 at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center.

Oregon’s 1,152nd COVID-19 death is a 76-year-old woman in Linn County who tested positive Dec. 3 and died Dec. 2.

Oregon’s 1,153rd COVID-19 death is a 98-year-old man in Marion County who tested positive Dec. 1 and died Dec. 12 at home.

Oregon’s 1,154th COVID-19 death is a 94-year-old woman in Washington County who tested positive Dec. 3 and died Dec. 10 at home.

Oregon’s 1,155th COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive Nov. 25 and died Dec. 11 at home.

Additional Graphs:

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**You can find a breakdown of regional availability here.

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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.

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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