MARCH 12th COVID-19 Update

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Michael Dembrow

March 12, 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.

As you’ll see in tonight’s newsletter, COVID metrics remain stable and relatively low.  Given our current very low transmission rate (see the report below on the latest epidemiological projections), we can expect continuing declines.  However, there continue to be risks, particularly if the new COVID variants take hold here.

As you’ll also see in the newsletter, yesterday was another big day for vaccinations here.  We’re now receiving 126,000 first doses per week.  In addition, the federal government is sending 31,470 doses directly to pharmacies and 4,000 to Federally Qualified Health Centers, which serve primarily low-income communities of color. These numbers are scheduled to increase to 200,000 per week soon, putting us on track to have more than a million Oregonians vaccinated by the end of March.  According to OHA Director Pat Allen, that will get us to 77% of those currently eligible.  At that point, we’ll move on to the next groups.

I’ve been hearing from more people in the Metro area who were able to receive their first dose at a pharmacy, have had their name drawn by GetVaccinated.oregon.gov, and are wondering what to do to get their name off the list.  You can log in to your GetVaccinated account and delete it.  In any case, if you’re offered a choice of appointments and don’t accept any of them, your spot will be passed on to someone else.

Please stay safe, and let me know if you have any questions about information in today’s newsletter.

 

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TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

  • New COVID Cases: OHA reports 402 new COVID cases today.  The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 159,037.
  • Variant COVID Cases: The reported number of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant in Oregon has increased by six, for a total of 17. The P.1 (Brazilian) variant is still at 1.
  • Positive Test Results: OHA reports 665 positive tests today. The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 229,596. 230,261
  • Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 15,961 tests today Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 3,938,818.
  • Positivity Rate: The test positivity ratio for Oregon today is 4.2%.
  • Hospitalization Information:
    • Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 123 (2 more than yesterday)
    • ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 23 (1 fewer than yesterday).
    • Available ICU Beds: 173 (5 more than yesterday)
    • Other Available Beds: 592 (13 more than yesterday).
    • Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 8 (1 fewer than yesterday).
    • Available Ventilators: 765 (5 fewer than yesterday).
  • Deaths: I’m sorry to report 3 additional COVID deaths today.  The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 2,319.
  • Vaccinations: As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
    • New Immunizations Reported Today: 34,613
      • 23,075 were conducted yesterday
      • 11,536 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: 1,269,591
      • 626,334Pfizer doses
      • 633,911 Moderna doses
      • 8,485 Johnson & Johnson doses
  • Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 809,142
  • 461,917 now fully vaccinated with two doses
  • To date, 1,567,515 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon. (149,060 more than yesterday.)
    • 81.0% of these doses have been administered so far. The national average is now 75.8%. 
    • 19.1% of Oregonians have now been vaccinated.
    • 10.9% of Oregonians have now been fully vaccinated.
  • Additional Quick Updates:
    • The Oregonian reports on today’s press conference that the Governor held with OHA Director Pat Allen and various medical advisors. For now, she is sticking with the current vaccination timetable.  But if we are able to receive vaccine doses at the rate that President Biden has promised (double the current rate), that timetable will be cut in half.   Read more here.
    • In today’s press conference, OHA Director Pat Allen announced that all pregnant women, irrespective of age, will be eligible for the vaccine with the wave of eligible Oregonians on March 29. Which “underlying conditions” will make one eligible on that date?  Read about it here.
    • Multnomah County entered the “Moderate Risk” category today. Here’s what that means. Here's what it means.
    • Cellphone data is showing that Americans have started leaving home even more than they did before the pandemic. This is concerning.   Read more here.

 

Governor Issues Executive Order on School Reopening

The details of the Governor’s order regarding school reopening were released this morning. You can read it here. K-5 schools are directed to reopen to in-person instruction during the week of March 29 and middle/high schools to open during the week of April 19. 

Meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Education is updating its COVID advisory guidance in light of improved understanding of COVID transmission and new directions from the CDC.  The Governor has directed them to complete this work by the end of next week.

Schools will still be required to follow the strict requirements of the guidance regarding masking, distancing, and cohorting.  If they don’t, they will lose the liability protection that the Legislature gave them in the last Special Session. 

The Governor’s order recognizes that not all parents will choose in-person or hybrid instruction for their children.  They may have many reasons for needing to stay with distance learning for the remainder of the school year, and the order ensures that their needs will be accommodated.  I’m pleased to see that the order allows for this.  The Governor’s initial letter last week suggested that this would be optional for districts, and therefore might not be an option for many.  I’ve been pressing the Governor’s staff and ODE to make sure that the choice was left up to parents, and I’m pleased to see that this will be the case.

Here is the Governor's press release about the order.

 

Disease Model Update: Continued Improvement

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 ongoing reduction in cases that began in January and has stabilized at this lower level since then. It also reflects the lower hospitalization and death rates that have followed.

As of February 24, the statewide Re was likely between 0.51 and 1.15, with a best estimate of 0.83.

Based on the data seen up to February 24, the modelers believe that the “Re” (Effective Reproduction Number, the number of secondary cases generated by a single case) in Oregon was approximately 0.83 (more precisely somewhere between 0.51 and 1.15, with a best estimate of 0.83).  This means that we can expect the number of new cases to continue to decline.

In late December the Re rate was above 1.0, and we were seeing new cases rising.  Since the beginning of 2021, the Re rate has stayed below 1.0. 

We can see this playing out in case counts during this period.  The 7-day rolling average of diagnosed cases saw a temporary post-holiday increase in cases (with day-to-fluctuations due to holiday testing disruptions), followed by a rapid decline in mid-January and a steady decline over the last few weeks. The 7-day rolling average of hospitalizations (less affected by fluctuations in testing) has been steadily decreasing since its late-November peak.  Most recently, hospitalizations have continued to decrease between March 2 and March 10.

The modelers do caution us to remember, though, that these are statewide estimates—transmission rates have varied by county, race, ethnicity, and age.

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 0.83), during the period of March 17  to March 30 the projected number of new diagnosed cases will fall to 57 per 100,000 people for the state as a whole. (This rate translates to a daily average of 170 new diagnosed cases (currently an average of 300. New severe cases (i.e., those requiring hospitalization) would fall to 6 per day by March 30.

Scenario 2: Transmission Increases

This scenario assumes that we will see a return to increased transmission by 30%, to an Re of just over 1.0.  If that were to occur (presumably due to a relaxation of restrictions or individuals letting down their guard), new diagnosed cases will increase to 88 per 100,000 people by March 30, an average of 265 new diagnosed cases per day. New severe cases will be around 10 per day by March 9.

According to the modelers, the differences in these scenarios may be due to some combination of changing behaviors, vaccination coverage, and/or viral infectivity; the individual contributions of these changes cannot currently be estimated separately.

What might cause the number of cases to rise again?

  • If people adhere less to prevention recommendations.
  • If a variant, more infectious strain of COVID were to circulate more widely.
  • If the lowering of most counties’ risk levels, which creates more opportunities for potential exposure in a variety of settings, leads transmission to rise again.

Even so, 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 an increase in transmission. 

 

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 402.   Here is today’s breakdown by county:

Baker (3)

Benton (18)

Clackamas (49)

Clatsop (2)

Columbia (2)

Coos (21)

Crook (1)

Curry (5)

Deschutes (8)

Douglas (19)

Grant (4)

Hood River (1)

Jackson (24)

Jefferson (2)

Josephine (25)

Klamath (11)

Lake (2)

Lane (14)

Lincoln (5)

Linn (12)

Malheur (1)

Marion (34)

Multnomah (73)

Polk (8)

Tillamook (5)

Umatilla (3)

Union (4)

Washington (41)

Yamhill (5)

 

And the Deaths

Oregon’s 2,317th COVID-19 death is a 93-year-old man in Josephine County who tested positive on March 1 and died on March 10 at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center.

Oregon’s 2,318th COVID-19 death is a 70-year-old woman in Deschutes County who died on Feb. 2 at St. Charles Bend Hospital.

Oregon’s 2,319th COVID-19 death is a 63-year-old man in Deschutes County who tested positive on Jan. 24 and died on Feb. 12 at St. Charles Bend Hospital.

 

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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