The Oregon Health Authority announced late Friday that it has again revised its process for reporting test results to align with the new statewide framework. This new health and safety framework is based on four risk levels for counties level of COVID-19 spread: extreme, high, moderate and lower risk. One of the key new metrics in determining the spread of the virus is the percentage of positive COVID-19 tests. To determine that, Oregon Health Authority will no longer count the people tested and will instead count test results.
The announcement did not address how the alarming number of false positive and false negative tests would be accounted for in these new metrics, since both false positive and negative tests will still be counted after a single individual could have been tested multiple times. In many cases, those who test positive for COVID-19 are immediately retested to verify as well as others who are tested multiple times after diagnosis to determine progression.
Since Governor Brown implemented a huge influx of rapid COVID-19 tests from the federal government at the beginning of October, Oregon began performing 60,000 to 80,000 COVID-19 rapid tests per week and Oregon’s single day COVID-19 case record has more than doubled, peaking Friday with 2,176 new confirmed cases in a single day. Oregon has 2,087,084 total Electronic Laboratory Reports, with 1,970,033 negative Electronic Laboratory Reports,117,021 positive Electronic Laboratory Reports while also reporting 81,437 COVID-19 cases across the state. According to Oregon’s new matrix, as of Thursday December 3rd after the current 2 week Freeze ended, Curry County entered the next phase of State’s COVID risk matrix in the ‘High’ risk category, and California is expected to order many businesses to close or limit capacity in the coming days as part of a new stay-at-home order Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
Curry County’s latest report Friday, December 4th, now reports testing 3,849 individuals with 2,731 negative tests, and now has 39 active confirmed cases of COVID-19, 110 total positve tests and has recorded 2 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services reported testing 10,821 individuals with 10,410 negative results, 134 active cases and 411 total confirmed cases reported by Public Health, with no current hospitalizations and 1 death.
Humboldt County to the south of Del Norte County reports 850 total cases, adding 164 new CoVID-19 cases in the past week after testing 46,029 individuals with now 177 active cases, 828 recoveries, 49 hospitalizations, and 9 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic as of Friday, Friday, December 4th.
Coos County to the north, reported testing 18,424 individuals with 17,853 negative tests, adding 84 new cases of COVID-19 in the past week with now 571 total positive cases and 3 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Josephine County reports testing 24,802 individuals with 24,231 negative results, adding 61 new cases in the past week, 571 total positive cases of COVID-19 and 5 deaths.
Jackson County continues to see significant increases after reporting another 1,497 new cases of COVID-19 this past week after testing 98,852 individuals with 93,711 negative test results, 5,141 total cases of COVID-19 and 13 new deaths in the past week now totaling 41 deaths as of Friday, December 4th.
State of Oregon Totals:
