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April 22, 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
First of all, Happy Earth Day! I hope you were able to find time to get outdoors, pay some attention to the beauty and life-sustaining qualities of the outdoors, and ponder the ways in which you can help protect those qualities.
COVID cases are high again today, as are hospitalizations. We’re getting closer to the threshold of 300 Oregonians in hospital for COVID that could trigger further restrictions. Legislators will be meeting with the Governor tomorrow, and we may learn more about that..
Only one COVID death was reported today, and the test positivity rate has again gone to a more acceptable level—however, as you’ll see below, this is likely due to another reporting anomaly.
I do want to correct a mistake I made in last night’s newsletter and that my 11 pm eyes and brain failed to catch—the bill prohibiting firearms from public buildings is SB 554, not SB 454. Sorry about that.
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 989 new COVID cases today. That number includes some cases that should have been reported yesterday; the two-day average is 785 cases. The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 178,110.
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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. The reported numbers have increased: 112 (up from 69) cases of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant, 7 cases (up from 4) of the P.1 (Brazilian) variant, and 10 (up from 8) cases of the B.1.351 (South African) variant. In addition, we are now seeing 140 (up from124) cases of the B.1.427 variant, and 479 (up from 474) of the B.1.429 variant.
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Positive Test Results: OHA reported 1,368 positive tests today (again, this is the result of under counts yesterday). The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 257,772.
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Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 33,846 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is now 4,560,294.
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Note from OHA:Due to a delay in laboratory reporting, OHA received a large quantity of ~13,800 negative electronic laboratory reports (ELRs) on April 21, 2021. The reports are from March 7 to April 20. As a result, daily ELR totals are higher and percent positivity is lower for April 21 than anticipated.
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Positivity Rate: The test positivity ratio for Oregon today is 4.0%.
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Hospitalization Information:
- Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 283 (11 more than yesterday)
- ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 69 (4 more than yesterday).
- Available ICU Beds: 141 (3 fewer than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 513 (51 more than yesterday).
- Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 30 (2 more than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 812 (2 more than yesterday).
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report 1 additional COVID death today. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now 2,467.
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Vaccinations:
- As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
- New Immunizations Reported Today: 48,387
- 28,535 were conducted yesterday
- 19,852 were conducted earlier, but the reports were received yesterday (there can potentially be a three-day window for reporting)
- The 7-day running average is now 34,328 doses per day.
- Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 2,662,784
- 1,398,443 Pfizer doses
- 1,172,050 Moderna doses
- 91,159 Johnson & Johnson doses*
- We are seeing small daily increases in the number of J&J doses administered; OHA reported today that this is due to an error that is being investigated.
- Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 1,658,130
- 1,091,777 now fully vaccinated with two doses
- To date, 3,330,045 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon. (That’s 19,800 more than was reported yesterday, for a total of 261,320 for the week so far.)
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Additional Brief Updates:
- The Governor will hold a media briefing on COVID response tomorrow morning at 11. She’ll be joined by OHA and the Oregon Latino Health Coalition. A livestream will be available on YouTube. A Spanish language simulcast will be available on OHA's Facebook page.
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Here are slides from OHA Director Pat Allen’s most recent presentation to the House Health Care COVID-19 Subcommittee. It’s full of a variety of charts and graphs. If you want to watch the presentation, here's the link.
- The Washington Post reports that we’ve experienced a significant drop in COVID vaccinations over the last week and discusses some of the reasons.
- This writer is calling our impending vaccination challenge the last-mile problem and believes that we lack an answer to this problem.
- We legislators are being hammered by people writing us telling us to prohibit so-called “vaccine passports” that would allow universities and businesses to require proof of vaccination. Here’s an opinion piece arguing that we should not be "catering to vaccine holdouts."
- And here’s an opinion piece from the Head of the School of Medicine at University of California San Francisco arguing that this is the most dangerous moment to be unvaccinated.
- The CDC’s vaccine advisory team will be meeting tomorrow to decide on next steps for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Here's what we can likely expect.
- As restaurants are increasingly opening back up or getting ready to reopen, a new crisis is emerging for the industry: difficulty finding restaurant workers.
The OHA and CDC Investigate a J&J-Connected Oregon Death
We learned today that an Oregon woman has died from a rare but very dangerous blood clot last week within two weeks of receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine. She was in her 50s. It is now being investigated.
Information about the death was sent to the CDC through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the national reporting system used to collect reports of adverse events after vaccination, on April 18. OHA was notified two days later.
Health care providers are required to report certain adverse events after COVID-19 vaccines, in accordance with the emergency use authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 vaccines. These include serious adverse events, such as death, any life-threatening event and inpatient hospitalization. At the time of the CDC–FDA pause recommendation, about 7.5 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been administered in the United States, with more than 87,000 doses having been administered at locations throughout Oregon.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will review the data accumulated to date and weigh the risks and benefits of the vaccine. These considerations will inform the ACIP’s recommendations regarding use of the vaccine going forward.
The ACIP is meeting tomorrow.
We have not heard of any patterns of serious side-effects from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. And even if there turns out to be a causal relationship between these blood clots and the J&J vaccine, as far as we know so far, the incidence is extremely unlikely—less than one in a million chance.
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 993. Here is today’s breakdown by county:
Baker (14)
Benton (24)
Clackamas (116)
Clatsop (4)
Columbia (14)
Coos (6)
Crook (12)
Curry (2)
Deschutes (57)
Douglas (5)
Grant (1)
Hood River (5)
Jackson (46)
Jefferson (6)
Josephine (17)
Klamath (54)
Lake (2)
Lane (54)
Lincoln (7)
Linn (34)
Malheur (2)
Marion (109)
Morrow (1)
Multnomah (206)
Polk (20)
Tillamook (1)
Umatilla (8)
Union (1)
Wasco (16)
Washington (128)
Yamhill (20)
And the Death:
Oregon’s 2,467th COVID-19 death is a 67-year-old man from Linn County who tested positive on April 21 and died on April 21 at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center.
Note: Updated information is available for Oregon's 2,461st death, which was originally reported as an 82-year-old man from Douglas County. The man was actually 61 years old. OHA regrets the error.
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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