Citing increases in new cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations and positive infection rates across the state, Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday put a seven-day hold on reopening the economy, leaving the state’s largest county stuck in neutral and several others with their applications to enter Phase 2 on hold.
“This is essentially a statewide yellow light,“ Brown said during a news conference Friday morning. "This one-week pause will give our public health experts time to assess what factors are driving the spread of the virus and determine if we need to adjust our approach to reopening.”
Health officials called the pause “a reminder, not a rollback.” But neither they nor Brown said what specific criteria would have to be met to resume the reopening process. Since all the public health metrics they cited are lagging indicators, it could be several weeks before her move has any noticeable impact on virus trends.
Brown said she would continue to work with health experts to assess whether to lift the pause, extend it, or take other actions.
“We all wish this reopening could be happening faster,” she said. “My job, however, is to make tough decisions even when they are unpopular. And when it comes to health and safety of Oregonians, the buck stops here."
Oregon is joining Utah as the first states to put a hold on their reopening process, though cases are on the rise in nearly half the states as they push ahead with reopening their economies, according to the Associated Press.
Brown acknowledged the frustration that her move is causing, particularly for businesses and residents in Multnomah County, the state’s most populous and the only one that has yet to start the reopening process. The county had applied to start reopening Friday, and county officials said this week that they were in good shape to move forward, despite a surge in infections and an uptick in hospitalizations.
Phase 1 guidelines allows limited reopening of restaurants and bars, personal services such as salons and barbershops, as well as gyms and malls. Gathering of up to 25 people are allowed for recreational, social and cultural events.
Phase 2 eases restrictions further, allowing a limited return to office work, recreational sports, the reopening of pools, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and arcades, and bars and restaurants are able to stay open later. Allowable gathering sizes increase to 50 people indoors and 100 outdoors.
Six counties remain in Phase 1, though Hood River, Polk and Marion counties have asked the governor to move to Phase 2. Twenty-nine counties are in Phase 2. And Multnomah County remains the only that hasn’t entered the first phase.
On Friday, some Portland restaurant and bar owners who had announced their reopening plans on social media expressed frustration with the timing of Brown’s announcement, which came after many had pulled staff off unemployment and purchased thousands of dollars in perishable food and drinks in preparation.
“Once they said they’re going to apply June 5 for a June 12 opening, that expectation was kind of set,” said Tim Williams of Peter’s Bar & Grill in Northeast Portland. “I am supportive of these measures, it’s not that I don’t understand, it just creates a little bit of frustration.”
Public health officials said Friday that they are pumping the brakes because virus trend lines are moving in the wrong direction statewide, in urban and rural counties and from the coast to the mountains and in between. Jefferson, Wasco and Hood River counties have seen their case counts spike. Clackamas, Washington and Marion Counties are also seeing big increases.
Oregon Health Authority Director Pat Allen detailed the trends that drove the decision to pause. The state recorded its highest new case count to date – 178 - on Thursday. Newly reported cases increased by 75 percent statewide during the week ended June 7. The state has increased testing to more than 18,000 a week, so officials expected to see cases increase. But the positive test rate also increased from 1.9% to 3% statewide, still well below national averages but problematic. Meanwhile, the rolling 7-day average of hospitalizations has gone from from four to six cases.
“We want to see the percentage of positive cases stay flat or drop, not increase by half,” Allen said. He added that “because the number of severe coronavirus cases does not depend on the amount of testing we’re doing, new hospitalizations are a telling measure of how well we’re doing.”
Allen said the drivers of those increases include large workplace outbreaks around the state; increased testing finding more asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases; large gatherings; and, of course, reopening the economy. He said public health officials would have more information in coming days about whether large demonstrations in Portland or other communities are driving spread of the disease.
“My biggest fear is that people treat Phase 1 or Phase 2 like returning to things the way they were before the pandemic began,” he said. “That’s not what needs to happen."
Brown said her pause is a reminder that Oregonians need to double down on measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19: wearing face coverings, maintaining six feet of physical distance, avoiding large gatherings, staying close to home, washing hands frequently and covering your mouths when you cough.
“We are all in this together and every single one of our actions matter,” she said.
Multnomah County is the state’s most populous and has the most cases, and the coronavirus trends are mimicked there. The county had 43 new cases Thursday and its seven-day rolling average of new cases reached an all-time high this week. During the last three weeks, the number of hospitalizations has increased from 9 to 11 and then to 14 per week. And public health officials were unable to trace 40 percent of new cases back to a known outbreak or disease cluster last week.
Jennifer Vines, Multnomah County’s lead health officer, acknowledged that those numbers lag reality on the ground.
“What we’re seeing now is the result of viral transmission that happened days if not weeks ago, so we’re continually behind in trying to figure out where we’ve been and where we’re going,” she said.
Vines said county hospitalization numbers remain small, and that officials still feel their Phase 1 plan is adequate to reopen. She said she understood the frustration of businesses that want to get their lights on and residents stuck under the governor’s original stay-home order. But she said the governor had concerns statewide, and the county was not going to second guess her decision.
“We want to be cautious as a county. The governor wants to be cautious in her state role, so I certainly can’t fault her for that,” she said.
County officials heard from the governor’s office early Thursday that there were concerns about statewide trends in public health metrics, but they only heard that the governor was hitting pause on their application just prior to her office issuing a news release Thursday night.
Vines said fewer than five of the county’s new cases had told investigators that they had attended a recent demonstration, though officials say they are still waiting to see if the protests become a major source of community spread.
The county has avoided making any recommendation not to attend demonstrations. Commissioners have also declined to mandate that residents wear face coverings in public, recognizing that’s a safety concern for people of color and that enforcement of such a requirement might become its own problem. But Vines said the county is advising residents to wear face coverings at protests, maintain physical distancing when possible, and stay home if they’re sick.
“In public health we’re very sensitive to the effects of racism on people’s health,” she said. “This is a lifelong effect, a longstanding issue in our communities of color. So we are not discouraging people from attending protests for a different but equally pressing public health issue, which unfortunately contradicts much of our guidance around COVID-19.”
- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
- Staff writer Michael Russell contributed to this story.
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