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February 19, 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.
I’m happy to report another day with no reported COVID deaths. New infections remain relatively low, as do hospitalizations and our positivity rate. Based on the latest epidemiological projections, it’s likely that the number of new cases will continue to decline over the next few weeks. As we’ve been seeing for the last few weeks, most new cases are coming from outside the Portland Tri-County area.
Meanwhile, today’s newsletter shows that vaccinations are clearly back to where they were prior to the weather-related closures. With no new supply coming in again yesterday, due to national weather disruptions, our administration rate rose over the 80% mark.
In tonight’s newsletter you’ll find a summary of the Governor/OHA press conference today. It provided encouraging news about future supply, but also ongoing racial/ethnic disparities in vaccinations.
You’ll also find a link to additional information that we’ve received about the infant boy in Pendleton whom we lost to COVID last month.
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 492 new COVID cases today. This count is a combination of positive test results and those who are presumed positive. The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 152,190.
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Variant COVID Cases: OHA continues to report a total of 4 Oregonians who have tested positive for the B.117. (UK) variant and none of the other variants. We haven’t seen any new cases in the last few weeks. (However, though Oregon’s testing for the variants is more extensive than in most states, testing for variants remains limited.)
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Positive Test Results: OHA reports 487 positive tests 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 199,381.
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Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 16,461 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,465,787.
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Positivity Rate: Today’s test positivity ratio for Oregon is 3.0%. The national ratio today is 4.0%.
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Hospitalization Information:
- Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 176 (7 more than yesterday)
- ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 49 (3 fewer than yesterday).
- Available ICU Beds: 167 (same as yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 561 (20 fewer than yesterday).
- Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 23 (4 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 799 (5 fewer than yesterday).
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Deaths: I’m very happy to report 0 newly-reported COVID deaths today. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon thus remains at 2,149.
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Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
- New Immunizations Reported Today: 25,866
- 18,710 administered yesterday
- 7,156 administered previously and report received yesterday
- Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 755,657
- 401,315 Pfizer doses
- 353,655 Moderna doses
- Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 517,584
- 232,820 now fully vaccinated with two doses
- To date, 922,300 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon (same as yesterday).
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Today’s National Numbers:
- Total Tests: 341,860,099 (up 1,878,276 from yesterday).
- Total Cases: 27,749,224 (up 74,676 from yesterday).
- Deaths: 485,700 (up 2,477 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 Quick Updates:
- We received more information today about the infant who died last month in Pendleton. He was delivered by C-Section to a mother with COVID and died two days later. You’ll find more details in this Oregonian story.
- As a result of large COVID outbreaks at the Multnomah County detention centers (Downtown and Inverness), the Multnomah County presiding judge has ordered police to cite rather than jail people charged with lower-level crimes. Read more here.
- OPB’s Dirk Vanderhart reports on a judge throwing out a suit brought by several Republican lawmakers against the Governor over COVID emergency safety restrictions.
- I mentioned the other day that Senate Judiciary will be hearing a gun safety bill on Monday that would keep guns out of the Capitol and potentially other public buildings. (The hearing has been extended two hours Monday morning and will now go from 8 a.m. to noon.) House Judiciary had a hearing yesterday on another gun safety bill, HB 2543, which is designed to close the so-called “Charleston Loophole” that requires gun sales to go through after three days if a background check has not been completed in that time. Read more about the bill, which attempts to bring Oregon in line with states such as Utah and Florida, in this OPB News article.
- Bloomberg predicts that a surge in additional COVID vaccines will be coming to the states in the coming months, potentially allowing everyone to be vaccinated by mid-summer.
Highlights of Today’s COVID Press Conference
The Governor held her weekly COVID press release today, joined by the OHA director, state epidemiologist, head of the Oregon Primary Care Association, and a manager at the Virginia Garcia Federally Qualified Health Center. You can watch the news conference here.
Here are some of the things we learned about the current state of COVID vaccinations in Oregon:
- 95,021, or 32% of all eligible Oregonians over the age of 75, have been vaccinated so far.
- 152,511, or one in five Oregonians over the age of 65, have already been vaccinated.
- These include the most at-risk in these age groups—those living in nursing homes or other group homes, or receiving medical care at home.
- Despite the weather disruptions, incoming vaccines will allow us to remain on track to initiate scheduling for those 70 and older on February 22, and for those 65 and older on March 1.
- We will be receiving an additional 6,000 doses each week for Federally Qualified Health Centers such as the Virginia Garcia Center in Washington County, which provides extensive outreach to Latinx communities. This will mean a doubling of doses going to FQHCs.
- Pharmacies will also be receiving double the amount of vaccines starting next week, to nearly 25,000 doses per week. That will mean added appointments can be scheduled.
- Our state’s overall allocation will be increased from 83k to 107k per week.
- Walgreens is being added to the pharmacies delivering vaccines.
- Despite these increases, we have the capacity and ability to do much more. Lack of doses remains the constraining factor.
- Even as seniors become increasingly eligible to make appointments, there aren’t enough available doses for them to be able to secure their appointments right away.
Despite these positive developments, though, OHA Director Pat Allen admitted that we are still falling short in providing vaccines equitably to all racial/ethnic groups, most notably to our Latinx neighbors. White Oregonians have received the majority of vaccines in the first two months, which is partly a function of the groups that have been prioritized for vaccinations so far: health care workers, educators, and seniors, all of whom are predominantly white.
Here are some details:
- People who identify as white represent 75% of people in Oregon, but they only comprise about half (48%) of all COVID-19 cases. Nevertheless, so far they account for 74% of vaccinations.
- People who identify as Latino or Hispanic represent 13% of people in Oregon but comprise 26% of COVID-19 cases – twice their proportion of the population. Nevertheless, only 5% of the vaccinations administered to date have been administered to the Latinx community.
- People who identify as Black or African American are 2% of the state population and they represent 2.4% of COVID-19 cases. However, they represent under 2% of COVID-19 vaccinations.
- Native Americans comprise close to 2% of people in Oregon and account for close to 2% of COVID-19 cases and 2% of COVID-19 vaccinations.
Plans are being made to do more targeted outreach to racial/ethnic minorities, via FQHCs and other targeted vaccination events. The Governor will be announcing the next wave of vaccination prioritization after seniors on February 26. It appears that we can expect more prioritization of communities of color in the next wave.
Finally, one of the highlights of the news conference was getting to see a news spot of my friend and former college and legislative colleague, the indominable Margaret Carter getting her first dose of the vaccine. You can watch it here.
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 492. More than two-thirds of today’s reported cases are again from outside the Portland Tri-County region. Here is the breakdown of cases by county today:
Baker (2)
Benton (25)
Clackamas (27)
Columbia (12)
Coos (26)
Curry (8)
Deschutes (11)
Douglas (21)
Harney (3)
Hood River (2)
Jackson (52)
Jefferson (5)
Josephine (23)
Klamath (10)
Lake (3)
Lane (38)
Lincoln (1)
Linn (8)
Malheur (6)
Marion (42)
Morrow (5)
Multnomah (61)
Polk (15)
Tillamook (1)
Umatilla (12)
Union (4)
Wallowa (2)
Wasco (1)
Washington (54)
Yamhill (12)
 
 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,
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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