June 26th COVID-19 Update

June 26, 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 also hope that you’re able to find ways to cope with the extreme heat that we’re experiencing.  It’s proving to be a real challenge for many of us, and for some an outright danger.  For those of you in the Portland area, here again is a list of emergency cooling centers.

I couldn’t help but refer to this highly unusual (but promising to be increasingly usual) weather event when I spoke in favor of HB 2021, our 100% Clean Electricity bill this morning. I’m pleased to report that the bill passed the Senate and is now headed to the Governor for her promised signature.  It’s an important piece of climate action and a major accomplishment for the Legislature.   

As you may have heard already, we “sine die-d” the 2021 Legislative Session today at 5:40 pm.  So, in keeping my word to myself, my wife, and you all, this will be the last of the daily COVID updates.  I wish I could say that I was bringing it to an end because the pandemic was over.  Obviously, I can’t say that. Until our vaccination rate goes much higher, many Oregonians remain at risk. 

But with the bulk of the COVID restrictions coming to an end on Wednesday, those of us who are vaccinated may be able to resume our pre-COVID lives to a very large extent.

As for me, I’m looking forward to resuming my pre-Session life, at least for week or two!

I haven’t yet landed on a day for the weekly newsletters that will follow. OHA has announced that after this weekend they’ll no longer be reporting COVID metrics over the weekend.  So I’ll probably do it on Wednesday or Thursday, after the weekly COVID reports have come out, so I can include them. In the next one, I’ll also give you a list of some other resources you can use if you want to follow the metrics more frequently.

In the next newsletter I’ll also start providing recaps of the legislative session that has just concluded.  This session was so difficult in so many ways, but in the end we succeeded in passing landmark legislation in a number of areas: the environment, housing, behavioral health, water infrastructure, wildfire defense, education, police reform, and other efforts to dismantle systemic racism.  There were failures, of course, but those will become the springboards for future efforts.  And thanks to our surprisingly positive budget and the influx of enormous amounts of federal support, we've been able to make historic investments in a number of critical areas.

More to come on all of these.  As you’ll see below I and the two Reps in SD 23 will be holding a town hall Tuesday evening, and I’ll be doing my monthly constituent coffee on Saturday. They’ll be opportunities for you to catch up on the session that was.  For now, these will remain via zoom, but hopefully that can change sometime soon.

In tonight’s newsletter you’ll find the COVID metrics that were reported last night at midnight.  They show a slight reduction in case numbers, positive test results, percent positives, and hospitalizations, but overall they remain where they have been, slowly trending downwards.

Please stay safe (including from the heat) and let me know if you have any questions about information in tonight’s newsletter.

TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE

• New COVID Cases: OHA reports 227 new COVID cases today.  The cumulative number of cases in Oregon since the beginning of the pandemic is 207,998.
• Variant COVID Cases: Here are this week’s case counts for the COVID variants in Oregon, cumulative from the beginning of the pandemic (released on Wednesday):
  • 1,538 (up from 1,433) cases of the B.1.1.7 (formerly known as the U.K. variant, now called the Alpha) variant,
  • 315 cases (up from 286) of the P.1 (formerly Brazilian, now Gamma) variant,
  • 132 (up from 125) cases of the B.1.351 (formerly South African, now Beta) variant.
  • In addition, we are now seeing 1,106 (up from 1,028) cases of the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant (Epsilon)and
  • 10 cases (same as last week) of the new B.1.617.2 (Delta).
  • OHA is now producing a Variant Dashboard,providing current variant case numbers for the state as a whole and for various parts of the state.  It’s updated each Wednesday.
• Positive Test Results: OHA reported 291 positive tests today. The cumulative total of positive test results since the beginning of the pandemic is now 301,437.
• Total Tests: OHA reported an additional 9,655 tests today. Our cumulative total of reported tests is 5,383,494.
• Positivity Rate: The test positivity ratio for Oregon today is 3.0%.
• Hospitalization Information: OHA only reports on the first two bulleted items over the weekend. 
  • Patients Currently with Confirmed COVID-19: 145 (6 fewer than yesterday)
  • ICU Patients Confirmed w COVID-19: 35 (three more than yesterday).
  • Available ICU Beds: 114 (16 fewer than yesterday)
  • Other Available Beds: 443 (17 more than yesterday).
  • Confirmed COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 16 (same as yesterday)
  • Available Ventilators: 828 (4 more than yesterday).
• Deaths: I’m sorry to report 2 additional COVID deaths today.  The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is 2,763.
• Vaccinations:
  • As of the end of yesterday, here are the latest numbers:
    • New Immunizations Reported Today: 12,748
      • 6,037 were conducted and reported yesterday
      • 6,711 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 8,533 doses per day.

• Total First and Second Doses Administered So Far: 4,365,159
  • 2,67,923 Pfizer doses
  • 1,728,843 Moderna doses
  • 166,245 Johnson & Johnson doses
• Total Oregonians vaccinated so far: 2,377,429
  • 2,139,367 now fully vaccinated with two doses
• Since OHA doesn’t report on this metric over the weekend, the number of Oregonians who still need to get a first dose for Oregon to reach the 70% threshold remains at 31,264. But it is almost surely now below 30,000.
• To date, 5,472,065 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon. (This is the same number as yesterday, so the total for last week was just 34,590 additional doses.)
  • 80.0% of these doses have been administered so far. The national average is now 84.5%.
  • 58.2% of Oregonians have received at least one dose (65.5% of those 16 and older, 69.1% of those 18+, which is the CDC standard).
  • 52.3% of Oregonians are now fully vaccinated (59.3% of those 16 and older).

• For more details, including the demographics of those receiving the vaccine and the counties in which the vaccines are being administered, 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 1b

• Want to see how close each county is to hitting the 65% target for moving to lower risk? Here's an interactive map and more, showing percentages for total population and for eligible population (residents age 16+).  It shows how close each county is to hitting the 65% target.

Additional Brief Updates

• According to an article in the A. Times, with the increasing prevalence of the Delta variant, "If You're Not Vaccinated, You're Hosed."
• An article in Forbes reports on especially cautionary messages coming from the World Health Organization around the Delta variant. WHO is suggesting that even the vaccinated should continue to wear masks as a result of the presence of this more virulent strain.  The CDC continues to point to evidence that nearly all serious cases of COVID are among the unvaccinated.
• Zeynep Tufekci, who has been doing great COVID stories for the New York Times, does a deep dive into the controversy around the origins of COVID. and some of the troubling conclusions that may be coming.
• We all know that the COVID vaccine has become a divisive topic of controversy. What happens in families where the teen wants to be vaccinated, but the parent or parents say no?  In such cases, controversy rises to another level.
• Here’s reporting on thelast day of session from OPB’s Dirk Vanderhart.

Ready for An End-Of Session Recap?

Next Tuesday, June 29, Reps Barbara Smith Warner, Khanh Pham, and I will be holding a ZOOM TOWN HALL!!!  It’ll be an opportunity for us to give you a recap of the many accomplishments (and inevitable frustrations) during this very unique 2021 legislative session.  There will be A LOT for us to talk about.  Hope you can make it!

It will be from 5 to 6 pm.  You can register here.

I’ll be following up with a constituent coffee a week from Saturday.  Hope to see you at one or both.

Where Are Today’s  Cases?

If we put together the positive test results and new “presumptive cases” reported today, the overall number of new cases reported is 227.  Here is today’s breakdown by county:

Baker (4)

Benton (4)

Clackamas (24)

Clatsop (2)

Columbia (6)

Coos (5)

Crook (1)

Curry (2)

Deschutes (8)

Douglas (12)

Hood River (3)

Jackson (14)

Jefferson (2)

Josephine (3)

Klamath (1)

Lake (1)

Lane (13)

Lincoln (6)

Linn (20)

Malheur (1)

Marion (28)

Morrow (4)

Multnomah (35)

Polk (4)

Tillamook (2)

Umatilla (4)

Union (1)

Wallowa (1)

Wasco (1)

Washington (11)

Yamhill (4)

And the Deaths:

Oregon’s 2,762nd COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old man from Marion County who tested positive on June 19 and died on June 24 at Salem Hospital.

Oregon’s 2763rd COVID-19 death is a 72-year-old man from Harney County who tested positive on June 13 and died on June 14 at Boise VA 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

• 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