Oregon health officials say they have no plans to restore statewide coronavirus restrictions amid a new and concerning resurgence of infections, and instead encouraged county governments Thursday to consider measures to slow spread.
The Oregon Health Authority is consulting with local health agencies and urging them to take action but is not going to propose mandating masks or vaccinations among health workers or other employers. Some counties, alarmed by recent spikes in cases, are now considering targeted actions.
“A localized pandemic demands effective localized public health interventions, not a statewide response,” Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen said during a news conference.
Allen said counties with low vaccination rates should “take action now” and local officials should urge their populations to get vaccinated, wear masks and avoid social gatherings if they haven’t received shots.
Gov. Kate Brown’s office went further, saying in a statement they are “strongly recommending that local leaders consider implementing temporary measures such as masks and physical distancing.”
Thursday’s comments came just three weeks after Brown lifted all statewide restrictions June 30, including mask mandates and social distancing requirements. Hospitalizations and new daily coronavirus cases have shot up since then in Oregon, as they have in the rest of the country, and are now slightly higher than they were at this point in 2020.
The state’s growing concern over the resurgence came after officials for weeks had not directly addressed the threat. Asked earlier this month whether they thought lifting a statewide mask mandate would lead to increased cases, officials July 12 would not directly answer and instead pointed to outdated modeling that showed continued declines in cases.
As of Thursday, Oregon reported 169 hospital beds filled with confirmed COVID-19 patients, up from 134 on July 1. Oregon in the past week is averaging 376 daily cases, just over double from the first of the month.
Those numbers are significantly lower than during various peaks of the pandemic, but the recent growth in cases differs in one important way from surges of the past: It affects almost exclusively a portion of the population that has chosen not to be immunized against the coronavirus since vaccines became universally available in April.
“The virus has evolved and it now poses an even greater threat to the unvaccinated,” Allen said. “And that threat is concentrated among unvaccinated people living in low vaccination counties.”
State officials have not released recent data analyzing cases and deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated. But for June, the health authority said more than nine in 10 cases and deaths were among people who had not been fully vaccinated.
Only about 71% of adults in Oregon have been fully or partially vaccinated against COVID-19, with low rates in counties such as Josephine, Morrow and Umatilla. Those are some of the same areas now seeing the highest case rates, with Umatilla County, for example, recording more than five times as many new cases per capita as highly vaccinated Multnomah County during a recent two-week span.
That was even before the highly contagious delta variant fully emerged in Oregon. Officials on Thursday said that variant is now estimated to make up half of all cases, a rate that’s lower than in the rest of the country – suggesting the trajectory in Oregon may only get worse in coming weeks.
But some local health officials are wary of mandates, even as they worry about the case growth they have seen.
Umatilla County in eastern Oregon has seen some of the largest case increases of any county in the state, going from an average of 10 new cases a day July 1 to 36 new cases a day July 20.
Anything above 30 is “just too high,” county health director Joseph Fiumara Jr. told The Oregonian/OregonLive, and “can overwhelm this area extremely quickly.”
If cases stay above that baseline this week, he said he would ask county commissioners to issue recommendations such as that the public wear masks and businesses limit how many people can be inside at a time.
Mandates, however, would be unlikely to work because of pushback from a community that has consistently disdained state-issued restrictions, he said.
Part of Fiumara’s goal in convincing the public to protect themselves is to stave off the possibility that Brown could reinstate statewide restrictions, he said, though he hasn’t heard that she’s considering doing so.
“I assume at some point she would be forced to” if cases continue to climb, he said.
Jefferson County’s health director is worried because the case trends over the last week match the trends exactly one year ago. His department hasn’t been able to link rising post-Independence Day cases to specific outbreaks.
With the data he has in hand, Michael Baker said things could go one of two ways: Either the surge in cases is driven primarily by July 4 gatherings and will soon subside, or the surge is driven by larger forces and will continue to grow without extra intervention.
In the latter case, Baker said he, like the Umatilla County health director, would ask local commissioners in the central Oregon county to ask the public to mask up and take other measures.
Baker said he believes the cases are driven by a “false sense of security” that Brown’s lifting of restrictions gave.
“I think we stopped a little too soon,” Baker said of the mask and social distancing requirements.
Jackson County’s health officer is also concerned about COVID-19 spreading in his county, calling the rapid spread of the disease “disturbing.” About 39 people tested positive a day in the county July 20, up from about 11 July 1, state data show.
Dr. Jim Shames said his immediate goal is to reach every last person who actually wants a vaccine in his southern Oregon community.
And he doesn’t think mandating masks to curb the spread of disease would be effective, given socioeconomic and political factors that “make our work difficult,” he said.
Cases will continue to grow, Shames said, and it’s unclear what the county can do to stop it.
“I don’t see the way out,” Shames said. “I don’t see one simple solution.”
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-- Fedor Zarkhin
503-294-7674; fzarkhin@oregonian.com