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April 11, 2021
Dear Neighbors and Friends,
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 that COVID case numbers have come back down, though still at the higher level where they’ve been since the last week of March. We’ve gone our second day in a row without a reported COVID death, which is great (but remember that there probably are a few deaths that have occurred over the last few days that have yet to be reported). On the other hand, we’ve again seen a slight rise in COVID hospitalizations.
The news on the vaccination front continues to be good for the state as a whole. Today’s reported numbers are lower than we’ve experienced recently, following three successive days of new records being set. Still, the numbers are very high for a weekend. Our seven-day average is 37,256 doses per day.
Statewide vaccinations among seniors (65+) are now at 72.3%, which is probably helping to drive that low COVID death rate. As you’ll see in a couple of the articles linked further down in the newsletter, though, some counties are well below that level, meaning that some are higher.
Umatilla County (the Pendleton area) has the lowest percentage of residents who have received at least one dose (21.4%). Lincoln County has the highest at 45%, followed by Hood River County and Deschutes County (Bend). The statewide average right now is nearly 35%.
Oregon women are much more likely to be vaccinated than are men: 57% of those vaccinated so far have been women, and 43% men. I’ll leave you to speculate as to why that is . . .
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 499 new COVID cases today. The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 170,568.
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Variant COVID Cases: OHA is now producing a Variant Tableau dashboard providing current variant case numbers for the state as a whole and for various parts of the state.
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Positive Test Results: OHA reported 587 positive tests today. The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 246,288.
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Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 10,325 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 4,355,430.
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Positivity Rate: The test positivity ratio for Oregon today is 5.7%.
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Hospitalization Information: The OHA only reports on the first two items below during the weekend. I’ll update the other metrics on Monday.
- Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 179 (9 more than yesterday)
- ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 46 (same as yesterday).
- Available ICU Beds: 165 (3 fewer than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 550 (68 more than yesterday).
- Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 15 (2 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 810 (39 more than yesterday).
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Deaths: I’m pleased to report 0 additional COVID deaths today. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon remains at 2,440.
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Vaccinations:
- As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
- New Immunizations Reported Today: 33,381
- 22,729 were conducted yesterday
- 10,652 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: 2,258,702
- 1,156,393 Pfizer doses
- 1,021,821 Moderna doses
- 79,507 Johnson & Johnson doses
- Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 1,431,782
- 902,888 now fully vaccinated with two doses
- To date, 2,772,135 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.
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Additional Brief Updates:
- OK, if you’re not vaccinated yet, you should be by summertime—but your children likely won’t be. What does that mean for any dreams you might have for a summer vacation? Here's how some epidemiologists are planning to handle it.
- What are our chances of actually reaching “herd immunity,” that point where the virus cannot find enough unvaccinated (or previously uninfected) hosts to thrive and remain contagious? We face a number of challenges: vaccine hesitancy, new COVID variants, COVID fatigue and lowered safety standards, and unvaccinated children. Will they prevent us from reaching the necessary point? Much uncertainty remains around this moving target. this moving target.
- Speaking of vaccine hesitancy, the Statesman-Journal’s Tracey Loew has a nice story about how that's playing out here in Oregon./
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Here's a first-person confessional in the Washington Post from someone who is fully vaccinated at last, but is finding “reemergence” a challenge.
- Although vaccination sites are not supposed to be requiring particular forms of identification, immigrants without documentation are finding it a challenge to get their vaccines in some parts of the country. Here’s more. Here's more.
- Have you or someone you know experienced a post-vaccination rash? That actually may be a good thing.
- Although some people are saying this last year was a “lost year” for their kids, many experts believe that this is the wrong way for parents to be looking at this experience and is actually sending the wrong message to their kids. In fact, children—including “tweens” and teens—are quite adaptable and can bounce back, as long as they’re not made to feel like failures. Here's more.
- Finally, here’s a detailed look from NPR at the question of whether or not colleges and universities will require students to have been vaccinated. when they return in the fall. Right now it seems that many privates and some publics will, at least for students living on campus. But of course it’s controversial.
The Week in Salem: Looking Back
Though the House is still experiencing a slowdown due to the requirement that bills be read aloud in their entirety, the pace did pick up there, with 81 bills making it to a vote. In order to accomplish that, though, they had to be on the floor day and night, Monday through Saturday. Republicans did agree to suspend the readings on some of the longer bills, including a 27-pager on Saturday, which certainly helped.
Meanwhile, the Senate continues to proceed steadily. We passed 39 bills this week. The plan is for us to continue to meet three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for the remainder of the month. We expect to be adding Tuesdays in May. As to the question of when lobbyists and the general public will be able to come back into the Capitol, that will depend on what happens with COVID case numbers over the next few weeks.
We did have two unusual things happen in the Senate this week. One was that on Wednesday we had multiple “Calls of the Senate.” This occurs if three senators demand that everyone’s attendance be verified prior to a vote. This is meant to prevent members from slipping out to avoid having to take a vote they don’t want to take. In this case it had to do with Senator Dallas Heard of Roseburg (who’s also the head of the Oregon Republican Party), who has been voting no on all bills to protest his opposition to the Legislature’s current safety protocols. He has been leaving the chamber in order to avoid being recorded as a no vote on certain measures (e.g., memorials to individuals whose lives are being honored). That tactic was used several times in order to keep him there to cast his vote. We’ll see if it’s needed again in the future.
The second unusual event happened on Thursday, when a bill failed on the floor. This rarely happens, as a bill rarely comes out of committee and scheduled for a floor vote unless there is a clear sense that there will be majority support on the floor. This was a bill that would require Oregon drivers to have their headlights on at all times as a means of increasing visibility and reducing accidents. It came out of the Joint Senate/House Transportation Committee on a split vote, so perhaps its demise shouldn’t have been entirely a surprise. I was among those supporting the concept, but a narrow majority of senators from both parties opposed it, largely because it had a fine attached to it that was comparable to a fine for speeding. It may or may not come back at some point with the penalties reduced.
I personally don’t mind seeing a bill go down following debate on the floor, at least not if it’s been carefully considered and broadly discussed in advance. If it then fails to get the needed support, so be it. This one kind of slipped by us. I doubt that we’ll see this happen very often.
The Week in Salem: Looking Forward
This week we are looking at another one of those deadlines, and it’s a big one. By the end of Tuesday, any bill in a House or Senate policy committee must be voted out—either to the floor or to Ways and Means if it has a financial impact to the state—or it is dead for this session. That means that committee agendas on Monday and Tuesday will be packed with bills awaiting their final votes. These are largely bills that have been “carried over” for at least a week awaiting final amendments from Legislative Counsel and fiscal analyses from the Legislative Fiscal Office.
These will be a tense couple of days, leading up to the deadline. There will be last-ditch efforts to kill bills, to save them, or to fix them. You’ll likely see some bills sent to the Rules Committee or less frequently to the Revenue Committee, both of which are not subject to the deadline, in an effort to buy a little time to make last-minute fixes.
Starting on Wednesday, Senate committees will start hearing House bills (i.e., bills that originated in the House, have already been voted out of their House committee and off the House floor), and their counterpart committees in the House will begin hearing Senate bills. The tension level will go down substantially at that point and build up gradually again as the 2nd-Chamber deadlines approach in May.
Meanwhile, bills await their floor votes in each chamber. The House has another 80 bills lined up so far for this week. Again, because of the bill-reading requirement, they need to meet Monday through Saturday, including evenings, in order to get through those. The Senate has seventeen scheduled for Monday (plus a small number of Commission appointments that need Senate confirmation) and twelve scheduled for Wednesday. We haven’t yet received our list of bills scheduled for 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 499. Here is today’s breakdown by county:
Baker (1)
Benton (6)
Clackamas (72)
Clatsop (1)
Columbia (9)
Coos (6)
Crook (3)
Deschutes (35)
Douglas (6)
Grant (7)
Jackson (22)
Jefferson (8)
Josephine (9)
Klamath (35)
Lane (46)
Lincoln (7)
Linn (11)
Malheur (1)
Marion (47)
Morrow (1)
Multnomah (99)
Polk (11)
Tillamook (2)
Union (1)
Wallowa (1)
Washington (43)
Yamhill (9)
And the Deaths:
OHA again reports no additional COVID deaths today.
 
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,
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 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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