NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, March 8th, 2020

COVID-19 Update: Oregon announces that its total tally of known cases has doubled

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties in the Pacif­ic North­west are work­ing dili­gent­ly to mit­i­gate. Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound science.

The nov­el coro­n­avirus does­n’t take week­ends off, so pub­lic health author­i­ties are work­ing sev­en days a week in an effort to com­bat the dis­ease. Today brought a fresh round of updates from state and local offi­cials in the Pacif­ic Northwest.

We begin with a bul­letin from Seat­tle-King Coun­ty Pub­lic Health.

Twelve new cas­es of COVID-19 have been report­ed to Pub­lic Health – Seat­tle & King Coun­ty through 11:59 PM on 3/7/20, bring­ing the total num­ber of report­ed King Coun­ty cas­es to eighty-three.

Of the twelve new cas­es report­ed today, two are deaths. The total num­ber of deaths report­ed to Pub­lic Health is now sev­en­teen. The two deaths being report­ed today include:

  • A woman in her eight­ies, a Life Care Cen­ter res­i­dent, was hos­pi­tal­ized at Ever­green­Health, and who died on 3/6/20
  • A man in his nineties, a Life Care Cen­ter res­i­dent, was hos­pi­tal­ized at Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter, and who died 3/5/20

Of the sev­en­teen deaths report­ed, six­teen are asso­ci­at­ed with Life Care Cen­ter [of Kirkland].

Statewide num­bers as of this after­noon are as follows:

2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Washington

Coun­tyPos­i­tive (con­firmed)Deaths
Clark10
Grant10
Jef­fer­son10
King8317
Kit­ti­tas10
Pierce40
Sno­homish311
Unas­signed140
Total13618

And now, an update from the Ore­gon Health Authority.

Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty (OHA) con­firmed sev­en new pre­sump­tive cas­es of nov­el coro­n­avirus, COVID-19, today.

OHA also announced actions it is tak­ing to slow the spread of the virus and pro­tect Ore­go­ni­ans, in response to Gov­er­nor Kate Brown’s emer­gency declaration.

“We are pre­pared to acti­vate an unprece­dent­ed state and pri­vate effort to con­tain the spread of COVID-19 in Ore­gon by focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on at-risk pop­u­la­tions,” said OHA Direc­tor Patrick Allen.

“We want to pro­tect Ore­go­ni­ans at great­est risk of the most severe out­comes of this dis­ease, includ­ing old­er adults, peo­ple with under­ly­ing con­di­tions, peo­ple who are home­less and those who are vul­ner­a­ble in oth­er ways.” He said the emer­gency pow­ers Gov. Brown autho­rized today give OHA more free­dom and flex­i­bil­i­ty to take spe­cif­ic actions to con­tain the out­break. These actions include:

  • Final­iz­ing agree­ments with major hos­pi­tal sys­tems to expand loca­tions where COVID-19 tests can be con­duct­ed safely.
  • Prepa­ra­tions to mobi­lize Oregon’s med­ical reserve corps to pro­vide emer­gency sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble populations.
  • Expand­ing telemed­i­cine so patients can be screened, eval­u­at­ed and treat­ed by health care providers with­out com­ing into a clin­ic or hos­pi­tal emer­gency department.
  • Con­ven­ing providers who serve old­er adults and vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions to mobi­lize an aggres­sive out­reach and pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy to pro­tect at-risk people.
  • Seek­ing addi­tion­al fund­ing to sup­port Oregon’s response efforts.

Oregon’s new COVID-19 cas­es bring the state’s total num­ber of those who’ve test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus to fourteen.

Of the sev­en new cas­es, one is in Dou­glas Coun­ty, one is in Mar­i­on Coun­ty and five are in Wash­ing­ton County.

“The indi­vid­u­als whose test results we are announc­ing today are recov­er­ing at home or get­ting the care they need at a hos­pi­tal,” Allen said. “Con­tact inves­ti­ga­tions have begun to iden­ti­fy and iso­late any­one who may have been in close con­tact with these new cases.”

Four of the five new cas­es in Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty were con­tacts of the county’s first three cas­es and had been under monitoring.

The county’s fifth new case had no known con­tact with a con­firmed case. The per­son also had not trav­eled from a coun­try where the virus is cir­cu­lat­ing. There­fore, it is being inves­ti­gat­ed as a com­mu­ni­ty-acquired case. The Mar­i­on Coun­ty case had no pre­vi­ous con­tact with a con­firmed case and is sus­pect­ed of being com­mu­ni­ty spread. The Dou­glas Coun­ty case is being inves­ti­gat­ed as a com­mu­ni­ty-spread case. The coun­ty case count is as follows:

  • Jack­son: 2
  • Kla­math: 1
  • Umatil­la: 1
  • Wash­ing­ton: 8
  • Dou­glas: 1
  • Mar­i­on: 1

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation this morn­ing to dis­cuss Wash­ing­ton State’s response to COVID-19; he was asked about Don­ald Trump’s recent com­ments call­ing him “a snake”. The Gov­er­nor brushed aside the insult, telling CBS’ Mar­garet Bren­nan he real­ly does­n’t care what Trump thinks about him. The Gov­er­nor revealed he was meet­ing with state and local offi­cials to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing the can­cel­la­tion of large events mandatory.

Mean­while, the dis­ease is become real­er for Amer­i­ca’s right wing.

Arch­con­ser­v­a­tive right wing Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas revealed he came into con­tact with some­one at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) who has test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el coro­n­avirus. Cruz has decid­ed to self-quar­an­tine out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, despite not hav­ing any symp­toms him­self. Ari­zon­a’s Paul Gosar fol­lowed up with a sim­i­lar announcement.

The State Depart­ment advised Amer­i­cans to avoid cruise ships for the time being, unex­pect­ed­ly jolt­ing the mul­ti-bil­lion indus­try, which is strug­gling to jus­ti­fy the log­ic of con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate cruis­es after COVID-19 spread through mul­ti­ple cruise ships, includ­ing the Dia­mond Princess (see details on cas­es) and the Grand Princess, which is prepar­ing to dock in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

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3 Comments

  1. All of these advi­sories and pre­cau­tion­ary guide­lines might actu­al­ly help if any­one would think to include the largest most pro­lif­ic spread­er of this and all pathogens of this nature. Mon­ey. I’ve sent this mes­sage to sev­er­al new orga­ni­za­tions and sites like this one. Yet I still hear no men­tion of this clear and present danger. 

    The unchecked exchange if cur­ren­cy will be how we all get exposed. It’s how all the mys­tery cas­es con­tract­ed it. If the cas­es had no con­tact with peo­ple who were infect­ed then what’s left that they might have come into with. 

    No one wash­es their hands after touch­ing mon­ey — if they say they do, they are lying. Every­one has some of it… it’s in your pock­et or purse right now and you will not remem­ber to wash your hand till it is too late. A cough lasts a split sec­ond, but mon­ey it hangs out with you for awhile just wait­ing to infect you.

    # by Eric Faubion Fling :: March 11th, 2020 at 1:28 PM
    • Con­trary to your com­ment, not every­one walks around with cash in their wal­let or purse. Many young peo­ple like to go cash­less, and pay exclu­sive­ly with plastic. 

      The Seat­tle Times has actu­al­ly pub­lished an arti­cle about this.

      Quot­ing from their article:

      There is no con­sen­sus among health author­i­ties on whether cash can spread the coro­n­avirus, which has caused out­breaks of the COVID-19 ill­ness across the globe.

      Offi­cials at the U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion were unable to con­firm whether the agency had spe­cif­ic guid­ance on han­dling cash. A spokesper­son for Pub­lic Health — Seat­tle & King Coun­ty said the agency also had no spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy but added that it was “look­ing into the question.”

      # by Andrew Villeneuve :: March 12th, 2020 at 12:35 AM
  2. We’re just a few days behind Italy. This is going to get real­ly bad. 

    # by Isha Noor :: March 20th, 2020 at 9:00 AM
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