March 11th COVID-19 Update

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March 11, 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 metrics remain positive, with relatively low case numbers, hospitalizations, and positivity rate.  Reported deaths are higher than they have been (at 11), but most of them actually occurred last month.  We haven’t seenany new reports of variant cases in Oregon for the last couple of weeks.  As I show further down in the newsletter, things are dramatically improving in our long-term care facilities, which may soon be reopened for visitors.

Yesterday was a strong day for vaccinations, with more than 30,000 Oregonians receiving one of the COVID vaccines.  I’m hearing more positive stories of seniors getting the vaccine or being contacted for an appointment.  In this newsletter I provide a little more of my own positive story.

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 367 new COVID cases today.  The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 158,644.
• Variant COVID Cases: OHA again reports no changes on the variants in Oregon, so  the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant in Oregon is still at 11 and the P.1 (Brazilian) variant is still at 1.
• Positive Test Results: OHA reports 606 positive tests today. The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 229,596.
• Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 17,388 tests today Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,922,857.
• Positivity Rate: The test positivity ratio for Oregon today is 3.5%.
• Hospitalization Information:
  • Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 121 (1 fewer than yesterday)
  • ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 24 (2 more than yesterday).
  • Available ICU Beds: 168 (2 more than yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 579 (21 more than yesterday).
  • Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 9 (1 more than yesterday).
  • Available Ventilators: 770 (12 more than yesterday).
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 11 additional COVID deaths today.  The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 2,316.
• Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
  • New Immunizations Reported Today: 30,653
    • 20,002 were conducted yesterday
    • 10,651 were conducted earlier, but the reports were received yesterday (there can potentially be a three-day window for reporting)
  • Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 1,235,071
    • 614,812 Pfizer doses
    • 613,445 Moderna doses
    • 5,969 Johnson & Johnson doses
    • 445,624 now fully vaccinated with two doses

• To date, 1,418,455 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon. (144,380 more than yesterday.)
  • 79.0% of these doses have been administered so far. The national average is now 74.9%.
  • 18.6% of Oregonians have now been vaccinated.
  • 10.6 of Oregonians have now been fully vaccinated.
  • For more details, including the demographics of those receiving the vaccine, here is a link to more information about the vaccine and vaccination protocols.
  • Here is the daily vaccination tracker from Bloomberg.
  • And here is a link to each county's vaccination website. It provides access information for those in Category 1a and in 1b

• Additional Quick Updates:
  • The big news today is President Biden’s signing of the American Relief Plan, which includes substantial investments in COVID relief and economic relief, and his speech to the nation about it. It will definitely help us address these challenges at the state level.  He also asked the states to be prepared to make all adults eligible for the COVID vaccine by May 1, promising that there will be vaccination supply to handle that.  Read more here.
  • Earlier this week, several pharmacies in Oregon stopped providing vaccinations to seniors. This was in response to federal direction that educators be vaccinated immediately and made a national priority. Some pharmacies assumed that applied to Oregon as well, even though teachers had already been prioritized and most of them had already been vaccinated. This has been cleared up, fortunately, and those pharmacies are now providing the vaccines to those 65+. Read more here.
  • With significant increases in vaccines coming to the states in the near future, states face potential challenges in getting more people vaccinated quickly. Here's a story about ways in which states are preparing for this big increase in supply. 
  • President Biden announced a series of steps today to support states in being able to do the necessary inoculations,

Another Look at How Long-Term Care Settings Are Doing

In last night’s newsletter, I mentioned that we learned from this week’s COVID-19 Weekly Outbreak Report that there were 44 active COVID outbreaks among Oregon’s long-term care facilities.  I mentioned that this was a big drop from earlier reports. 

How big?  To get a better sense of that, I went back and looked at reports from the last several months.  You can how much better we’re doing among the most vulnerable Oregonians, those most at risk of hospitalization and death from the virus:

          12/9/20         191

          1/13/21         202

          2/10/21         116

          3/10/21           44

Residents of long-term care facilities were among the first to be vaccinated here in Oregon, and we’re likely seeing the effects of that early action.  Assuming that this trend continues, we should be seeing ongoing reductions in the state’s COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the coming weeks.

Behind the Appointment Curtain:  My Own Experience with All4Oregon

In last week’s newsletters I was able to tell you about my own good luck getting a vaccination appointment at my local Walgreen’s via vaccinefinder.org.  Kiki and I were both able to get our first doses a week ago, with our second dose scheduled for April 1. 

We had already registered with GetVaccinated.oregon.gov, which meant that our names were in the mix awaiting our random selection and notification.  As it happened, we both received notice today that we’d be contacted for appointments at the Convention Center within the next few days. Here’s the email that I received:

Thank you for signing up with Get Vaccinated Oregon. You have been selected to schedule a vaccination appointment at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. You will soon receive an email from All4OregonVaccineTeam to help you schedule your appointment. This email will include a unique scheduling link, which will be a green “Schedule Appointment” button, that cannot be shared. If you do not receive your unique scheduling email within a few days, please check your spam folder for an email from All4OregonVaccineTeam. IMPORTANT: This vaccination opportunity is for first-dose vaccine recipients only. If you are seeking your second vaccine dose, please contact the provider or vaccination location where you received your first dose.  Find more vaccine information at https://covidvaccine.oregon.gov/ Thank you, OHA and Get Vaccinated Oregon

In fact, my notification actually came within a few hours.  Here’s the message that I received within a few hours:

I went ahead and clicked on the schedule button to see what would happen.  Here is what came up:

That’s as far as I went, so that these available appointments would remain available for to others. But I'm glad I tried it out up to this point. It was gratifying to see how easy it was and how well the system seems to be working. 

Now we just need more doses to come in, so that more names can be drawn!.

More Turmoil at the Capitol

The House and Senate are now passing bills, holding informative hearings, and hearing testimony from people from all over the state and country.  Unfortunately, a great deal of partisan tension continues to pervade the Legislature.  The Democrats hold supermajorities in each chamber and are prepared to address the priorities that the voters elected them to accomplish. The Republicans are focused on obstructing these efforts in whatever way possible.

In the House, the Republicans are insisting that all bills be read in their entirety in order to slow everything down. The Oregon Constitution requires bills to be read aloud, a requirement that dates back to a time before copies of bills could be made and delivered in advance. In normal times, a vote is taken each day to suspend that requirement. But it requires a 2/3 vote to suspend a constitutional requirement.

Two-thirds is also the number that is required to constitute a quorum for our floor sessions.  This is an unusually high bar—nearly every other state has a quorum requirement of a simple majority: the same standard as we use for our committee meetings.  At least two Republicans are needed for the Legislature to do its work, and they have shown themselves willing and able to deny a quorum, even if it means bringing a session to an end.  It’s a nuclear option that has become all too common.  They’ve done it to stop school funding, climate action, and gun safety bills even after those bills were amended and compromised to partly address Republican concerns. The only way this tactic can be eliminated is through a vote of the people to amend the Constitution.

But for now we remain subject to this threat.  Senate Republican exercised it two weeks ago, causing a floor session to be canceled, and they nearly did so again today, delaying today’s floor session for an hour.  The subject of controversy today was a rules change proposed by the Democratic caucus that would withhold the per diems (currently $151 per day) that we receive while the Legislature is in session from any legislator whose unexcused absence prevents a quorum from being met.

They did eventually come to the floor but only after it was made clear that they can offer an alternative proposal next week. This may be merely delaying the inevitable.  Sometime before the end of this month, the first controversial bill is scheduled to come to the floor—SB 454, which would prohibit firearms from being allowed into the Capitol and other state buildings and potentially from schools, colleges, universities, and other public buildings.  We’ll see what happens then.

In the meantime, new bills continue to be introduced. This week’s House bills were introduced  on Monday  and  Tuesday .  This week’s Senate bills were introduced on Wednesday and on Thursday.

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 367. Nearly 2/3 are again from outside the Portland Tri-County area.  Here is today’s breakdown by county:

Baker (4)

Benton (8)

Clackamas (39)

Clatsop (1)

Columbia (3)

Coos (14)

Crook (2)

Curry (5)

Deschutes (23)

Douglas (21)

Grant (1)

Jackson (37)

Jefferson (2)

Josephine (13)

Klamath (8)

Lane (9)

Lincoln (1)

Linn (4)

Malheur (1)

Marion (30)

Multnomah (62)

Polk (7)

Tillamook (4)

Umatilla (13)

Union (12)

Wasco (4)

Washington (38)

Yamhill (1)

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 2,306th COVID-19 death is an 85-year-old man in Baker County who tested positive on Feb. 22 and died on March 6 at his residence.

Oregon’s 2,307th COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old man in Clackamas County who tested positive on Jan. 27 and died on March 2 at his residence.

Oregon’s 2,308th COVID-19 death is an 81-year-old man in Josephine County who tested positive on Feb. 26 and died on March 9 at Asante Ashland Community Hospital.

Oregon’s 2,309th COVID-19 death is a 92-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on Dec. 23 and died on Jan. 22 at his residence.

Oregon’s 2,310th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old man in Marion County who died on Feb. 26 at his residence.

Oregon’s 2,311th COVID-19 death is a 93-year-old man in Deschutes County who tested positive on Jan. 9 and died on March 9 at his residence.

Oregon’s 2,312th COVID-19 death is a 73-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on Feb. 8 and died on Feb. 28 at Adventist Health Portland.

Oregon’s 2,313th COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old woman in Polk County who died on Feb. 28 at her residence.

Oregon’s 2,314th COVID-19 death is a 43-year-old man in Union County who tested positive on March 10 and died on March 9 at Grande Ronde Hospital.

Oregon’s 2,315th COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old woman in Douglas County who tested positive on Feb. 8 and died on Feb. 17 at her residence.

Oregon’s 2,316th COVID-19 death is a 62-year-old man in Douglas County who tested positive on Feb. 8 and died on March 9 at Mercy Medical Center.

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