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January 29, 2021
Friends and Neighbors,
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.
Oregon’s positive COVID trends continue. We remain the second lowest of all the states in our COVID infection rates, a real tribute to the perseverance with which Oregonians are approaching the pandemic. Our hospitalization and death rates have fallen dramatically over the last two weeks.
In addition, the latest epidemiological projection for the state shows ongoing declines into the future. This is in contrast to the last few projections, which showed increases. Our current “Re” transmission rate is 0.82, meaning that transmission is in decline. (An Re of 1.0 means no change in daily case numbers.)
Yesterday the state immunized a very large number of Oregonians. We remain among the better states for vaccinations. Interestingly, we’re doing a much better job of vaccinating people in the more rural counties, where everyone in the 1a category and most educators and childcare workers have already been vaccinated.
In my last newsletter I reported on the OHA’s decision to stop providing daily lists of those who had died of COVID, and told you why I thought that was a mistake. My sense was that listing the losses in this way made it possible for us to connect with these individuals from all over the state as individuals. That feeling was confirmed by many of you in emails that I received after that newsletter appeared. I promised to reach out to OHA to ask them to reconsider, and I did.
What I heard from them wasn’t a surprise: providing these individual details required a substantial amount of research that was proving very difficult on days when death counts were particularly high—particularly on those days when a number of previously-unreported deaths came back to us from the CDC.
Unfortunately, but unfortunately not surprisingly, the issue quickly was politicized. Republicans put out press releases accusing the Governor of wanting to suppress information in order to hide the fact that many seniors were dying of the disease in order to justify her decision to postpone vaccinations of teachers and childcare workers two weeks ahead of seniors. However you feel about her decision to prioritize teachers in order to more quickly reopen schools, this accusation is patently false. The OHA was still telling us the ages of those who had died. Though they weren’t listing people individually, they could and did list the numbers of COVID deaths in each age category. (You’ll see that below).
However, while I appreciate the time it takes to do this work, and appreciate the extreme stress that OHA workers are under right now, I do believe that something was lost in making this change to aggregated data, and communicated that perspective to the Governor’s office and the OHA.
Fortunately, a reasonable accommodation was reached today. The Governor has directed the OHA to bring back the lists on a weekly basis. This will make it easier on the epidemiologists who don’t need to do this work every day and can focus on other things, but it will enable us to capture the reality of those we’ve lost on a regular basis, including their age, location of death, and the time it took for them to succumb after first testing positive.
I’ll be sure to share this information with you when it comes out each week. You’ll find links to a couple of stories about the Governor’s decision further down in the 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
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New COVID Cases: OHA reports 976 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 141,729.
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Positive Test Results: OHA reports 1,770 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 187,912.
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Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 29,072 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,162,750.
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Positivity Rate: Today’s test positivity ratio for Oregon is 6.1%. The national ratio today is 7.4%.
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Hospitalization Information:
- Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 288 (3 fewer than yesterday)
- Available ICU Beds: 151 (3 fewer than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 565 (15 fewer than yesterday).
- ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 68 (4 fewer than yesterday).
- Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 33 (1 more than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 778 (4 more than yesterday).
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report 8 COVID deaths today. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 1,938.
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Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
- New Immunizations Reported Today: 23,004
- 15,813 administered yesterday
- 7,191 administered previously and report received yesterday
- Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 382,368
- Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 314,957.
- 63,089 now fully vaccinated with two doses
- To date, 614,525 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
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Today’s National Numbers:
- Total Tests: 302,191,380 (up 2,111,018 from yesterday).
- Total Cases: 25,385,892 (up 155,333 from yesterday).
- Deaths: 423,645 (up 4,011 from yesterday).
- These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can visit that site HERE https://covidtracking.com/data/national
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Additional Brief Updates:
- OHA has just released the latest COVID forecast for the coming month. I’ll comment on it in detail tomorrow, but for now let me just say that it’s the most positive forecast we’ve seen in months. Check it out here.
- Last weekend USA Today featured an opinion piece by Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, and Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, arguing that under the right conditions, schools could be reopened to in-person instruction safely.
- Here are a couple of articles about the decision to restore the list of those who have died in OHA reporting, now on a weekly basis. Here’s an article by Brad Schmidt of the Oregonian and here's one from Lauren Dake of OPB.
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 976. Here is the breakdown of cases by county today:
Baker (2)
Benton (27)
Clackamas (97)
Clatsop (5)
Columbia (10)
Coos (16)
Crook (5)
Curry (2)
Deschutes (43)
Douglas (10)
Harney (2)
Hood River (5)
Jackson (125)
Jefferson (16)
Josephine (20)
Klamath (14)
Lake (1)
Lane (61)
Lincoln (11)
Linn (26)
Malheur (10)
Marion (82)
Morrow (5)
Multnomah (143)
Polk (27)
Sherman (1)
Tillamook (1)
Umatilla (33)
Union (5)
Wasco (10)
Washington (135)
Wheeler (2)
Yamhill (22)
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,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-281-0608
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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