January 30th COVID Update

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Michael Dembrow

January 30, 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.

Today’s new COVID cases, hospitalizations, and positivity rates have all gone down today, though our number of reported deaths has gone up.  You’ll see the details further down in the newsletter, along with more information about the latest epidemiological forecast—a welcome turnaround from the gloomy projections of the past.

Today’s reported vaccinations are the highest reported so far, which is a testament to ongoing improvements in our ability to get the vaccine to people after a month of doing this.  Nevertheless, our percentage of doses used actually went down slightly today; that’s because we also received an influx of new doses (many of them actually have to be reserved for second doses. 

In tonight’s newsletter you’ll find a range of information related to immunizations, the school reopening controversy, Legislative hearings related to the pandemic, and yesterday’s OHA press briefing.

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 707 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 142,146.
  • Positive Test Results: OHA reports 841 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 188,756.
  • Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 18,321 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,181,071.
  • Positivity Rate: Today’s test positivity ratio for Oregon is 4.6%. The national ratio today is 7.0%.
  • Hospitalization Information: OHA reported updates to the first two items. The others still have Friday’s numbers and will be updated on Monday.
    • Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 280 (8 fewer than yesterday)
    • ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 67 (1 fewer than yesterday).
    • Available ICU Beds: 151 (3 fewer than yesterday)
    • Other Available Beds: 565 (15 fewer than yesterday).
    • Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 33 (1 more than yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 778 (4 more than yesterday).
  • Deaths: I’m sorry to report 19 COVID deaths today. You’ll see the age ranges of those we’ve lost further down in the newsletter.  The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 1,957.
  • Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
    • New Immunizations Reported Today: 25,500
      • 19,867 administered yesterday
      • 5,633 administered previously and report received yesterday
    • Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 407,869
    • Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 331,685.
      • 71,747 now fully vaccinated with two doses
    • To date, 665,325 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
  • Today’s National Numbers:
    • Total Tests: 305,995,357 (up 2,088,902 from yesterday).
    • Total Cases: 25,697,888 (up 146,657 from yesterday).
    • Deaths: 430,120 (up 2,972 from yesterday).
    • These national numbers come from the COVID Tracking Project. You can visit that site HERE https://covidtracking.com/data/national
  • Additional Brief Updates:
    • The Oregonian’s Kate Williams has a troubling story about the growing impacts of COVID infections on adults in custody in our state prisons.  You’ll find it here.
  • Here’s a view from Washington state of the different approaches to vaccination prioritization in Washington and Oregon from the Seattle Times. Sneak preview: no easy answers.
  • I’ve written before about the work being done by OSU scientists to trace COVID levels by analyzing waste water. This was how they discovered that the UK and South African COVID variants had made their way into Oregon. OSU scientists were part of yesterday’s OHA press briefing to discuss their work. Here's an OPB story about their findings.
  •  Here's an OPB story about yesterday’s press briefing, focusing on efforts to catch the tri-county region up with the rural counties in getting through their 1a populations.
  • One of the complexities of the school reopening debate has to do with racial and socio-economic disparities. We’ve heard a lot about the way that distance learning is exacerbating disparities. But we’ve also come to understand that families of color are less willing to have their children return to in-person instruction. This article from today's Washington Post shows how these differences are playing out in Washington, D.C.

New House Health Care Subcommittee on COVID-19 Now Meeting

For those of you who are interested in getting into the weeds on COVID and COVID relief efforts in Oregon, I encourage you to subscribe to the agendas of this new subcommittee, chaired by Representative Maxine Dexter, herself an ER doctor and passionate about improving our public health response. It meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:15 to 5 pm. Monday's meeting will be focused on COVID in long-term care facilities.  Wednesday’s meeting (not yet posted) will focus on COVID in our correctional institutions.  If you’d like to provide written, phone, or zoom testimony, click on the above link for more information.  That link will also take you to the video link to watch the hearing live or recorded.  The page also will also include an “e-subscribe” link if you’d like to receive agendas and other updates to the work of the subcommittee.

 

Latest Epidemiological Forecast:  Big Improvements

OHA has just released the latest COVID projections report, based on input from the Institute for Disease Modeling in Seattle. Their analysis is updated every three weeks.  

The update reflects the big reduction in cases that began two weeks ago and has stabilized at this lower level since then. It also reflects the lower hospitalization rates that have followed.

Based on the case data seen up to January 19, the modelers believe that the “Re” (Effective Reproduction Number, the number of secondary cases generated by a single case) in Oregon was approximately 0.81.  That’s a big reduction from earlier transmission rates.

They estimate that the statewide Re fell dramatically in late-November and wavered between 0.8 and 0.9 through mid-December, increased to above 1.0 in late December, then declined again in early January to around 0.8. As of January 13, the statewide Re was likely between 0.65 and 0.98, with a best estimate of 0.81.

Their analysis shows that the 7-day rolling average of diagnosed cases saw a temporary post-holiday increase (with holiday-related fluctuations in testing volume) before resuming its decline in early-January. They point out that hospitalizations are less prone to fluctuations in testing and test reporting over the holidays, so they are important indicators of what’s actually happening; significantly, the 7-day rolling average of hospitalizations has been steadily decreasing since its late-November peak, just as the current set of restrictions was initiated. That decrease continued between January 19 and January 28.

The report includes a number of graphs and discussion of assumptions and methodology that I invite you to check out.  Looking forward, it provides us with two possible scenarios for what we can expect over the next month.

Scenario 1:  Transmission Continues As Is:

If we continue as we are now (with an Re of 0.81), by February 3-16 the projected number of new diagnosed cases will fall to 140 per 100,000 people for the state as a whole. (This rate translates to a daily average of 420 new diagnosed cases. New severe cases (i.e., those requiring hospitalization) would fall to 13 per day by February 16.

Scenario 2: Transmission Increases

This scenario assumes that we will see a return to increased transmission by 30%, to around 1.15.  If that were to occur (presumably due to a relaxation of restrictions or individuals letting down their guard), new diagnosed cases will increase to 240 per 100,000 people by February 16, an average of 720 new diagnosed cases per day. New severe cases will be around 24 per day by February 16.

If you look back at earlier projections, you’ll see just how much more optimistic the picture now is, even in the scenario that envisions a jump in transmission.  The “As-Is” projection is a third of what it was a month ago.  Great news for now.

Given the growing availability of vaccines, we should continue to see our rates go down.  However, as the report mentions, most people won’t be getting vaccinated soon, and they will need to remain cautious, or else the second scenario will be the more likely one.

Also, I should point out that the report doesn’t take into account the potential impact of new, more contagious variants of the disease.


Which Counties Have Finished Their 1a and Largely Finished Their K-12 and Childcare Workers?

One of the points of controversy that surfaced at yesterday’s OHA press conference was that some counties are having their anticipated doses reduced or diverted entirely next week.  These are counties that have largely finished immunizing their 1a, K-12, and Childcare workers.  They tend to be counties with smaller numbers of individuals to begin with, and for various reasons their 1a and educator workers have been easier to identify and get to, or it may be that they were sent a larger number of doses to begin with.

Republican legislators and activists, not surprisingly, have portrayed this as a deliberate effort by the Governor to take doses from rural constituencies to give them to her base urban constituencies.  This makes for a good sound bite, but really that belies the reality of the distribution. 

Here are the counties that will be getting fewer doses next week as the others catch up:

Baker, Clatsop, Crook, Deschutes, Gilliam, Harney, Jefferson, Josephine, Lake, Lincoln, Linn, Malheur, Marion, Morrow, Sherman, Tillamook, Wasco, and Wheeler.

And here are the counties that will be getting a higher number of doses in an effort to catch up: 

Benton, Clackamas, Columbia, Coos, Douglas, Jackson, Klamath, Lane, Multnomah, Polk, Washington, Umatilla, and Union.

As you can see, this latter group includes counties that are urban, rural, and frontier.

The goal is to allow the entire state to start vaccinating seniors at the same time, beginning a week from Monday and proceed from there.

We also learned at the press conference that the state will be getting an additional 10,000 Moderna first doses this week, which will help get through the remaining 1a group.  The goal here is to get each group to 70% first-dose coverage before moving on to the next group.  Statewide, we’re at 75% of the 1a group (though as you can see it varies from county to county) and should hit the statewide 70% mark for educators and childcare workers over the next week.  With the current incoming supply, we should be able to do the same for the 80+ population the following week, then the 75+ population the week after that, and so on.

We also learned that 90,000 people in the 60+ category have already received their first dose at least.  Most of these are our most vulnerable seniors—those in skilled nursing or receiving medical care at home.

 Here are the slides from yesterday’s briefing.

 

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 707. Nearly two-thirds of today’s reported cases are outside the Portland Tri-County area.  Here is the breakdown of cases by county today:

Benton (7)

Clackamas (64)

Columbia (14)

Coos (15)

Crook (7)

Curry (1)

Deschutes (26)

Douglas (8)

Hood River (6)

Jackson (42)

Jefferson (8)

Josephine (30)

Klamath (22)

Lake (1)

Lane (62)

Lincoln (5)

Linn (18)

Malheur (9)

Marion (63)

Morrow (7)

Multnomah (122)

Polk (25)

Tillamook (1)

Umatilla (36)

Union (5)

Wasco (9)

Washington (82)

Yamhill (12)

 


And the Deaths:

death list

cases

cases 7

cases 14

positive

tests

percent

hospitalizations

ventilators

icu

icu beds

other beds

deaths

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: 503-281-0608
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301