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February 25, 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.
COVID case numbers remain overall stable today, with further reductions in hospitalizations and our test positivity rate. We learned of ten additional COVID deaths today, most of them fairly recent. We also received further information about the large number (32) that were reported yesterday. As suspected, most of these were delayed reporting of deaths that occurred in December and January. You’ll find the details on both groups further down in the newsletter.
We’re now pretty consistently administering more than 20,000 doses of the COVID vaccine each day. Fortunately, supply appears to be keeping up. So far this week we’ve received around 220,000 doses. (Some of this was to make up for supply that was delayed last week due to weather.) At this rate, we should be able to hit the target of getting first doses to everyone 65 and older within the next 5-6 weeks.
But that’s not to say there won’t be a fair amount of frustration and heartache getting there. Remember what I had to say last night about receiving as many positive reports about vaccination appointments as negative ones? Well, forget about that. Today the reports were nearly all bad for those seeking appointments in the Metro area (it appears to be much better in the rural counties), as the OHA site had technical problems and started crashing at 9 this morning.
Nevertheless, appointments are being filled. All the available slots for the PDX Airport drive-through site were gobbled up in ten minutes and all those at the big Convention Center site were gone within 90 minutes. But many frustrated people were left behind.
I’ve been in contact with OHA about these problems, and they promise that we’ll see improvements in the system in the coming days. I’ll let you know more as I hear more.
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 553 new COVID cases today. The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 154,554..
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Variant COVID Cases: OHA reports a total of 9 Oregonians who have tested positive for the B.117. (UK) variant and none of the other variants. (However, although 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 555 positive tests today, The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 201,942.
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Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 20.098 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,546,317.
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Positivity Rate: Today’s test positivity ratio for Oregon is 2.8%. The national ratio today is 4.1%.
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Hospitalization Information:
- Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 156 (6 fewer than yesterday)
- ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 38 (8 fewer than yesterday).
- Available ICU Beds: 166 (10 more than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 543 (26 fewer than yesterday).
- Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 13 (9 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 808 (29 fewer than yesterday).
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report 10 newly-reported COVID deaths today. You can read more about those we’ve lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 2,204.
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Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
- New Immunizations Reported Today: 22,841
- 15,684 administered yesterday
- 7,157 administered previously and report received yesterday
- Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 881,206
- 462,895 Pfizer doses
- 417,528 Moderna doses
- Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 570,130
- 305,366 now fully vaccinated with two doses
- To date, 1,170,595 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon. (That’s an additional 36,900 new doses coming into the state yesterday.
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Today’s National Numbers:
- Total Tests: 349,785,144 (up 1,837,743 from yesterday).
- Total Cases: 28,150,738 (up 75,565 from yesterday).
- Deaths: 498,208 (up 3,138 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:
- The Governor announced in a press release today that she is extending the State of Emergency another 60 days, until May 1. She is required to do so (or modify it) every 60 days until the Emergency is over.
- The Governor will hold a press conference tomorrow morning at 11. A livestream will be available for the public on YouTube. Spanish and American Sign Language (ASL) simulcasts will also be available.
- Here’s a story on today's Republican walkout from The Oregonian’s Hillary Borrud. (See below for my take on it.)
- The Oregonian’s Aimee Green has been covering the many challenges of the vaccination appointment sites. Here's her account of this morning's technical challenges.
- Nicholas Kristof, respected columnist at the New York Times (and native of Yamhill County) has a fairly scathing column about school reopening.
- Last week I provided a link to a national article on the challenges of combining in-person and remote school instruction in a single class (aka “simulcast instruction”). OPB has a story about efforts in Portland and Beaverton to use this model.
- The COVID ACTNow map still has Oregon with the lowest COVID infection rate in the continental U.S. You can find the interactive map here.
No Floor Session Today—Yes, Another Walkout
This morning was supposed to have been the Senate’s weekly floor session, a time mainly for the introduction of new bills. You can see the bills that were slated for introduction here. As you’ll see, 32 of the sponsored bills were from Democrats and 23 were from Republicans. Under normal circumstances, they would have been first-read on the floor, then referred to committee to be scheduled for a hearing.
But these are not normal times. In order to have a floor session, we need to have a quorum, meaning at least two Republican senators needed to be there in person. We waited. They never showed up. For the third year in a row, a walkout had occurred. (Of course, given the unusual circumstances of this year, “walkout” is not exactly the right term; we only come to the Capitol for floor sessions, and most Republicans generally do not attend anyway—though, to be fair, they for the most part live much farther from the Capitol than most Democrats and it’s a long draft for what at the moment is a 15-minute formality.) Without a quorum, we cannot do business.
When none of our Republican colleagues showed up, I first assumed the reason was a rancorous committee hearing that we had this morning in Judiciary, as we passed SB 554-10 (allowing guns to be restricted from public buildings) from committee on a 4-3 party line vote. However, it soon became clear that the refusal to show up and provide a quorum was actually a boycott that had been pre-planned. By the time we left the floor, a news release was waiting for us in our email inboxes that explained its motive. It was apparently intended as a symbolic gesture of protest against the Governor’s handling of school reopening and other uses of her emergency authority in handling the pandemic.
I won’t go into the many points of disagreement that I have with their statements in the release. I will say that as Chair of the Senate Education Committee I have yet to have one of my Senate Republican colleagues come to me to request any hearings or suggest any joint action related to school reopening. Rather, their preferred means of communication on these challenges since the beginning of the session has been press releases, fundraising letters, and now a walkout. I understand the politics, but it’s a shame.
Anyway, I hope that this will indeed remain a one-day gesture. Though today’s refusal to participate sets some important work back a week (particularly problematic because we lost much of last week due to the weather events), committee meetings did proceed on schedule today.
Next week and thereafter the Senate is set to begin meeting in-person for floor sessions twice a week (Wednesday and Thursday). Let’s hope we have a quorum.
Again, Oregon’s unusual two-thirds quorum requirement is in our constitution and cannot be changed without a vote of the people. I’m fully supportive of our scheduling such a vote as soon as possible and letting the voters weigh in on what I consider to be a repeated misuse of the process.
Report from the Employment Department
As he does regularly, Acting Employment Department Director David Gerstenfeld briefed the media yesterday on the unemployment situation and current status of unemployment benefits in Oregon. The audio and video links are available online.
He reported that last week the Department paid about $141 million in benefits to 183,000 people. Since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic in March 2020, they have paid $7.7 billion in benefits to approximately 558,000 people: equivalent to approximately 11.3 million weeks of benefits, a truly incredible number.
The Department is closely watching Congress in their efforts to pass economic stimulus legislation. Employees have already begun to lay the groundwork to implement any benefit program extensions or new programs as quickly as possible if and when they are approved by Congress. Their goal is to minimize any disruptions to benefits now that we are so near the expiration of many of the Continued Assistance Act programs.
You can find more information about the current state of unemployment in Oregon; the disproportionate way that it has hit women, younger workers, and workers of color; new benefits programs; and the risk of scams and fraud in the communication from the Department that Legislators received this evening.
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 553. More than 2/3 of today’s cases are from outside the Portland Tri-County area. Here is today’s breakdown by county:
Baker (2)
Benton (12)
Clackamas (46)
Columbia (4)
Coos (26)
Crook (2)
Curry (5)
Deschutes (10)
Douglas (27)
Harney (1)
Hood River (2)
Jackson (75)
Jefferson (9)
Josephine (13)
Klamath (6)
Lane (51)
Lincoln (3)
Linn (16)
Malheur (4)
Marion (58)
Morrow (3)
Multnomah (66)
Polk (12)
Tillamook (3)
Umatilla (17)
Union (4)
Wasco (1)
Washington (61)
Yamhill (14)
And the Deaths:
The first 32 Oregonians listed before are from yesterday’s report. We didn’t receive their individual details until this morning. As you’ll see most of them date from December and January.
Oregon’s 2,163rd COVID-19 death is a 69-year-old man in Clackamas County who tested positive on Dec. 21 and died on Jan. 6 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,164th COVID-19 death is an 89-year-old woman in Clackamas County who tested positive on Jan. 19 and died on Jan. 30 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,165th COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old woman in Clackamas County who tested positive on Jan. 19 and died on Feb. 2 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,166th COVID-19 death is an 89-year-old woman in Clackamas County who tested positive on Jan. 9 and died on Jan. 28 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,167th COVID-19 death is a 51-year-old woman in Clackamas County who tested positive on Jan. 11 and died on Jan. 29 at Providence Portland Medical Center. She had underlying conditions.
Oregon’s 2,168th COVID-19 death is a 71-year-old woman in Coos County who tested positive on Feb. 1 and died on Feb. 23 at PeaceHealth Sacred Health Medical Center at Riverbend.
Oregon’s 2,169th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old woman in Douglas County who tested positive on Feb. 1 and died on Feb. 17 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,170th COVID-19 death is a 93-year-old man in Jackson County who tested positive on Jan. 13 and died on Feb. 3 at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,171st COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old woman in Jackson County who tested positive on Dec. 30 and died on Feb. 23 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,172nd COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old woman in Lane County who tested positive on Feb. 23 and died on Feb. 23 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,173rd COVID-19 death is a 68-year-old woman in Lane County who tested positive on Dec. 24 and died on Jan. 28 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,174th COVID-19 death is a 58-year-old woman in Marion County who died on Jan. 23 at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital.
Oregon’s 2,175th COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old woman in Marion County who tested positive on Jan. 2 and died on Jan. 23 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,176th COVID-19 death is a 77-year-old woman in Morrow County who tested positive on Jan. 30 and died on Feb. 6 at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,177th COVID-19 death is an 80-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 4 and died on Jan. 22 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,178th COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 5 and died on Feb. 16 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,179th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 15 and died on Jan. 21 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,180th COVID-19 death is an 82-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 12 and died on Feb. 5. The location of death is being confirmed.
Oregon’s 2,181st COVID-19 death is a 77-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 11 and died on Jan. 31 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,182nd COVID-19 death is a 90-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 7 and died on Jan. 24 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,183rd COVID-19 death is an 82-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Dec. 31 and died on Jan. 10 at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,184th COVID-19 death is a 90-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Dec. 18 and died on Feb. 5 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,185th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Nov. 4 and died on Dec. 31.
Oregon’s 2,186th COVID-19 death is an 89-year-old man in Linn County who tested positive on Jan. 24 and died on Feb. 5 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,187th COVID-19 death is a 77-year-old man in Washington County who died on Feb. 2 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,188th COVID-19 death is a 97-year-old man in Multnomah County who became symptomatic on Dec. 29 after contact with a confirmed case and died on Jan. 6 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,189th COVID-19 death is a 92-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 28 and died on Feb. 4 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,190th COVID-19 death is an 83-year-old man in Wasco County who tested positive on Nov. 18 and died on Feb. 17 at Mid-Columbia Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,191st COVID-19 death is an 84-year-old woman in Washington County who tested positive on Dec. 9 and died on Dec. 31 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,192nd COVID-19 death is a 93-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on Jan. 12 and died on Jan. 26 at Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,193rd COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old woman in Yamhill County who died on Jan. 7 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,194th COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old woman in Yamhill County who tested positive on Feb. 15 and died on Feb. 20 at her residence.
And here are the ten reported today. Most of these are from the last two weeks.
Oregon’s 2,195th COVID-19 death is a 96-year-old woman in Deschutes County who tested positive on Feb. 8 and died on Feb. 18 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,196th COVID-19 death is a 71-year-old woman in Douglas County who tested positive on Feb. 8 and died on Feb. 23 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,197th COVID-19 death is a 94-year-old man in Jackson County who tested positive on Dec. 29 and died on Feb. 13 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,198th COVID-19 death is a 63-year-old woman in Jefferson County who tested positive on Dec. 18 and died on Feb. 5 at St. Charles Bend Hospital.
Oregon’s 2,199th COVID-19 death is a 71-year-old man in Klamath County who tested positive on Feb. 7 and died on Feb. 23 at Sky Lakes Medical Center. conditions.
Oregon’s 2,200th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on Dec. 1 and died on Dec. 13 at his residence. He had underlying conditions.
Oregon’s 2,201st COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on Feb. 16 and died on Feb. 23 at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center.
Oregon’s 2,202nd COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old man in Marion County who tested positive on Dec. 19 and died on Feb. 23 at his residence.
Oregon’s 2,203rd COVID-19 death is a 68-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Dec. 7 and died on Dec. 5 at her residence.
Oregon’s 2,204th COVID-19 death is a 59-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Feb. 5 and died on Feb. 15 at Adventist Health Portland.
Additional Graphs:
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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