January 14th COVID-19 Update

January 14, 2021

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 COVID numbers remain high but are moving in the right direction, at least today.  Case numbers, hospitalizations, deaths, and positivity rates are all lower than they’ve been.  In another piece of good news, vaccination rates are continuing to improve.  Just a week ago, only 26% of existing doses had been administered; today the rate is 45.5%, despite an influx of more than 70,000 doses since then.  You’ll find more information about the vaccination process in this newsletter. 

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

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• New COVID Cases: OHA reports 1,152 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 130,246.
• Positive Test Results: OHA reports 1,284 positive test results today. (Individuals may have had multiple tests come back positive, and each is now counted separately.) The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 174,028.
• Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 21,108 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 2,895,684.
• Positivity Rate: Today’s test positivity ratio for Oregon is 6.1%. The national ratio today is 11.2%.
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 29 additional COVID deaths today. You can read about the Oregonians that we’ve lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 1,737.
• Hospitalized: OHA reports 50 new COVID hospitalizations. The total number of new hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic is 7,173.
• Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
  • New Immunizations Reported Today: 16,355
    • 10,172 administered yesterday
    • 6,183 administered previously and report received yesterday
  • Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 146,137
  • Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 133,090
    • 13,000 now fully vaccinated with two doses
  • To date, 321,425 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
    • 5% of these doses have been administered so far (national average is 37.0%).
  • For more details, including the demographics of those receiving the vaccine, go to the OHA Vaccinations Dashboard.  And here is a link to more information about the vaccine and vaccination protocols.   Finally, here is the daily vaccination tracker from Bloomberg.
• 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:
  • Patients Currently with COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 444 (26 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 415 (19 fewer than yesterday) have already received a positive test back.
  • Available ICU Beds: 147 (15 more than yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 637 (41 more than yesterday).
  • ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 101 (2 fewer than yesterday).
  • Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 57 (5 more than yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 780 (6 more than yesterday).
• Dashboards:
  • Oregon (OHA)
  • Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, & Yamhill Counties
  • Oregon COVID Cases by Zip Code
• Today’s National Numbers:
  • Total Tests: 275,775,230 (up 2,010,144 from yesterday).
  • Total Cases: 22,982,927 (up 225,411 from yesterday.)
  • Deaths: 379,451 (up 3,980 from yesterday).
  • These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can visit that site here.
• Additional Brief Updates:
  • The Governor will be holding a press conference Friday at 2 pm. The focus will be on the new vaccination process that’s being developed.  She’ll be joined by representatives of OHA and the Oregon Military Department (because the National Guard will have a role to play in deployment of the vaccine). A livestream will be available for the public here. Spanish and American Sign Language (ASL) simulcasts will also be available. 
  • In last night’s newsletter I mentioned the risk that people will become complacent as a result of the impending increase in access to vaccinations. In response, a reader steered me to a recent CNN article that provides more information about this subject.
  • Coming up: The Oregon Health Authority has scheduled another Facebook Live event next Wednesday at 11:30. It will feature OHA Public Health Division Director Rachael Banks and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dana Hargunani to answer your questions about vaccinations. The Facebook Live is available in Spanish and English.

The Return of the Constituent Coffee

If you were able to attend the town hall that I held on Monday with Reps Barbara Smith Warner and our new colleague Khanh Pham, you got a good overview of the upcoming session and our priorities.  (It also gave us a chance to say farewell to our dear friend and colleague Alissa Keny-Guyer. It was very moving for all concerned.)

I know that we were only able to scratch the surface of the issues before us, so I promised to go back to constituent coffees, which allow for more conversation.  I wish it could be in person, and someday it will again be, but for now it will have to be by zoom.

I’ll start this Saturday morning (10am), and alternate with evening gatherings. I’ll be trying to keep the number of attendees relatively low, so that it can be more of a real dialogue.

Click here to register.

OHA Reports that Goal of 12K Immunizations Per Week Has Been Reached

OHA made the following announcement this afternoon regarding the increase in vaccination capacity in Oregon:

Based on updated totals, OHA announced that vaccination sites across the state met Gov. Kate Brown’s goal of ensuring 12,000 vaccinations a day at the end of last week. Vaccine providers in Oregon administered 12,039 total doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines on Jan. 8, 2021. The Governor required the benchmark to be met by the end of the two-week period that began Jan. 4.

Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize because providers have 72 hours to report doses administered and technical challenges have caused many providers to lag in their reporting. OHA has been providing technical support to vaccination sites to improve the timeliness of their data entry into the state’s ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).

“While we hit the Governor’s goal of hitting 12,000 vaccines administered in a day last week,” said OHA Director Patrick Allen, “we want to sustain and expand our daily totals. The state can’t achieve our goal to deliver vaccinations quickly, efficiently and equitably all on our own. I’m grateful for the hard work that staff in hospitals, local health clinics and other sites have put into ramping up vaccinations for Oregonians. Vaccines are the safest and most effective way we can end this pandemic.”

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 is 1,152.  Here is the breakdown of cases by county today:

Baker (7)

Benton (23)

Clackamas (70)

Clatsop (11)

Columbia (15)

Coos (11)

Crook (12)

Curry (1)

Deschutes (82)

Douglas (16)

Harney (6)

Hood River (9)

Jackson (75)

Jefferson (12)

Josephine (18)

Klamath (17)

Lake (3)

Lane (94)

Lincoln (2)

Linn (23)

Malheur (14)

Marion (137)

Morrow (9)

Multnomah (185)

Polk (13)

Umatilla (60)

Union (19)

Wasco (14)

Washington (162)

Wheeler (2)

Yamhill (30)

And the Deaths:

OHA has still not provided information about today’s 29 reported deaths.  I’ll have to provide the information about them in tomorrow’s newsletter. 

Additional Graphs:

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

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