By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Lincoln County commissioners generally support Gov. Kate Brown’s two-week “freeze” that puts new, strict limits on many businesses across Oregon beginning Wednesday – but they still have questions as to why counties with a low number of COVID-19 cases are being lumped together with high-case counties.
Even with a four-day mass testing event last week, the number of COVID-19 cases and “positivity rate” of tests in Lincoln County remains low and there have been no recent hospitalizations.
Yet Wednesday, businesses – everything from aquariums to gyms to offices to restaurants – will come under severe statewide limits at least through Dec. 2.
Following the large COVID-19 outbreak at Pacific Seafood in Newport last June, Lincoln County had one of the highest per capita case numbers in Oregon – and was the last rural county to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2. But those numbers declined sharply through the late summer and fall, and until the mass testing last week the county was averaging just 5 cases a week in November.
“This is going to be tough for a lot of people,” Commissioner Claire Hall said Monday during the county commission’s regular weekly meeting. “A lot of people are going to be upset because our case rate has been very low.”
Hall and Commission Chair Kaety Jacobson said they had been swamped with emails from constituents asking about the statewide versus county-by-county restrictions, including many wondering — and some urging — if there will be any county shutdown of lodging.
Before Brown’s announcement last week, the state had generally used a county-by-county or regional approach to reopening businesses or resuming other activities. But with the total number of daily cases surging statewide and Portland-area hospitals worried about being overcome with COVID-19 patients, Brown made her latest order apply across Oregon.
Hall said she asked the governor’s office and the Oregon Health Authority about the change in approach last Friday during a conference call. Hall said Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state epidemiologist, said the OHA’s biggest concern was hospital capacity, especially in the hard-hit Portland area.
“Portland metro area hospitals are struggling and that’s where most serious cases might go,” Hall said.
The two Samaritan Health Services hospitals in Newport and Lincoln City, which have 41 total beds, currently have no COVID-19 patients while their sister facilities in Corvallis, Albany and Lebanon each have 1-9 patients, according to the most recent OHA reports.
Just 25 of Lincoln County’s 544 COVID-19 cases since March required hospitalization.
County commissioners Monday expressed no appetite to again close motels, hotels and vacation rentals to visitors as they did last spring. The governor’s executive order does not address lodging other than to discourage non-essential travel and prohibit social gatherings of more than six people from no more than two households.
In answer to a question from Hall, Public Health director Rebecca Austen said because of the state’s decentralized tracking system, there is no way to definitively determine if a local case came from a tourist.
“Workforce outbreaks, not travelers in Lincoln County, were the issue here,” Austen said of the 544 county cases since March.
Sheriff Curtis Landers told commissioners that Oregon State Police and the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association were advising local law enforcement to take an “education first” approach to policing any reported violations – and urged people to not flood emergency dispatch centers with complaints.
“We can’t go door-to-door to see how many people are at Thanksgiving table,” Landers said, but that deputies would respond to reports of “egregious” behavior.