Central Oregon counties have worst COVID-19 infection rate
Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Three Central Oregon Counties had the highest rate of new COVID-19 infections over the past week, according to a state report issued Monday.
The new infection numbers come as the state ended an eight-week drop in new cases.
The County COVID-19 Community Transmission report, released each week by the Oregon Health Authority, lists the total number of cases, the cases per 100,000 residents and positive test rates of all counties with a population over 2,000.
The key marker is the per capita number – the rate of cases per 100,000 residents – that allows for a comparison between counties of different sizes.
For the week ending Oct. 29, the top rates were:
- Jefferson County – 542 new cases
- Crook County – 469 new cases
- Deschutes County – 401 new cases.
The statewide rate is 192 cases per 100,000 people.
Sherman County – the state’s second least populous county – had a rate of 791 cases per 100,000. But the sample size is so small as to lead to wide swings in totals each week.
The Community Risk report comes as the Oregon Health Authority reported a small uptick in new cases. It ended an eight-week decline in cases from the high levels of the spike caused by the delta variant.
Since sweeping into Oregon in late June, the highly contagious variant drove infections, hospitalizations and deaths to new records for the pandemic that first reached Oregon in February 2020.
Oregon reported just 81 deaths from COVID-19 in July – the lowest mark since June 2020, early in the pandemic. But the variant’s fatal impact rose to 421 deaths in August, and a record 653 in September.
October showed a decline to 366 deaths – a number that still ranked the month as the fifth most fatal of the 20 months measured by the Oregon Health Authority.
The record marks came despite the presence of vaccines against the coronavirus. The state recently reported that 85% of eligible adults had been vaccinated. It also implemented federal recommendations to allow for booster shots for those who had been vaccinated earlier.
OHA said the variant attacked the unvaccinated. While breakthrough cases of COVID-19 have risen somewhat during the spike, those who have received immunization account for less than 5 percent of cases requiring hospitalization and under 1 percent of deaths.
The spike peaked just after Labor Day and has begun a steep drop, but at a rate slower than public health officials had forecast a month ago. Hospitalizations are now expected to remain above 400 people per day into early December.
The Deschutes County numbers in the County Risk report issued Monday are significant in that they are so high for a county with a large population. The 2020 U.S. Census put the population at 198,253.
While Jefferson and Crook counties per capita rates are higher, both are in decline from inordinately high levels of previous weeks.
Desschutes County cases are rising.
The impact could be seen even in the raw numbers, unadjusted for population.
Deschutes County had the third most cases: 791.
Only Multnomah County and Marion County had more new cases.
Multnomah County, which includes Portland, is the state’s most populous county with 815,428 people.
Marion, which includes the state capital of Salem, is home to 345,920, making it the third most populous county in Oregon.
In the weekly report, Deschutes County had more cases than Washington County, which has more than three times the population.
Deschutes County had more cases than Clackamas and Lane counties, which have double its population.
All three Central Oregon counties have test positivity rates above 10% over the past week— twice the rate that state officials have said can be controlled by public health measures.
The state average on Tuesday wad 7.3%, but falling.
The numbers in the weekly County Covid-19 Community Transmission Report were once used by OHA and Gov. Kate Brown to place counties in one of four risk categories with different levels of restrictions on businesses, gatherings and events.
In June, Brown announced the state had come close to meeting the goal of 70% of all eligible adult residents having at least one shot of vaccine.
Brown lifted restrictions across the state, though OHA reported wide discrepancies among counties for infection and vaccination rates .
Despite a sharp spike in cases beginning in July, Brown did not reimpose mandatory restrictions.
OHA continues to compile the weekly report, but it is not used for any action by the state.
If still in use, all three Central Oregon counties, along with several other in the state, would have been at extreme risk level, the most restrictive of the four tiers.
The report on Monday follows a Oregon Health & Science University forecast on Oct. 28 showing that Hospital Region 7, which includes Bend and Klamath Falls, along with much of central and south central Oregon, was lagging behind the rest of the state in lowering hospitalization rates for COVID-19.
More information:
Risk report: The weekly update is at https://www.oregon.gov/oha/covid19/Documents/DataReports/Weekly-County-Metrics.pdf
Statewide statistics: OHA updates its COVID-19 dashboard of statistics on infections, hospitalizations and deaths each day at https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/oregon.health.authority.covid.19/viz/OregonCOVID-19Update/DailyDataUpdate
