Ansu Drammeh, R.N., a cardiovascular intensive care nurse at OHSU, is given the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Wednesday, December 16.
Just three days after Governor Kate Brown said a fourth surge of the COVID-19 pandemic was at Oregon’s doorstep, the Oregon Health Authority announced that wide swaths of the population now are eligible to schedule an appointment for a first round of vaccinations.
The list of statewide populations currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccination appointments as of April 5 is lead by frontline workers, which are people whose jobs put them in routine, regular, close contact with people outside of their household and household family members, who also are now are eligible to schedule an appointment.
Frontline workers include vaccine manufacturing and therapeutic device manufacturing companies, all retail stores, grocery stores, including supermarkets, mini-marts, pharmacies, and “specialty stores,” U.S. Postal Service employees, public transportation operators, administrators of education programs, a long list of workers from niche manufacturing industries, food service workers, energy industry employees, including those from utility companies, gas stations, fuel delivery and dealers, and environmental consultants, and the housing industry and all of the individual markets that fit inside that descriptor, like interior design, real estate, and construction.
The news media also is eligible to schedule a vaccination appointment, as are many other groups of people, which all can be found here on the OHA website.
Additionally, people with underlying medical conditions are automatically eligible to sign up for an appointment as of April 5. The OHA listed those conditions as including cancer, kidney disease, chronic lung diseases, dementia, diabetes types 1 and 2, down syndrome, heart conditions, HIV infection, an immunocompromised state or a weakened immune system, liver disease, those who are overweight and/or obese, pregnancy, sickle cell disease or thalassemia, smoking whether a current or former smoker, a recipient of a solid organ or blood stem cell transplant, stroke or cerebrovascular disease, substance abuse disorder, and other conditions related to the aforementioned.
The largest groups of people currently available to receive a vaccination appointment date include 765,000 people who are more than 65 years old, close to 152,000 educators, and approximately 400,000 people who work in the healthcare industry.
New cases, vaccinations, and deaths
The OHA reported on April 4 that there were 404 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19, which brought the state total to 166,882. The 14-day trend in Washington County, according to an April 5 New York Times report, shows average daily cases at 45 with 7.4 cases per 100,000 people.
COVID-19 vaccinations increased in the state immunization registry by 32,692 new doses, and of that total 22,084 doses already were administered on April 3 while another 10,608 jabs were provided on previous days but not entered into the registry until April 3, an OHA news release said.
Oregon now has administered just more than 1 million jabs of first and second doses of Pfizer, 924,6611 first and second doses of Moderna, and 49,520 single doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. To date, the number of vaccines delivered to sites across Oregon is 1,225,575 Pfizer doses, 1,102,200 Moderna doses, and 105,800 Johnson & Johnson doses.
The number of patients hospitalized in Oregon with COVID-19 as of April 4 was 150 and 43 of those patients were in intensive care unit beds when the information was reported.
Washington County had the third-highest rate of new reported cases in the state with 45, following Multnomah County (84) and Clackamas County (59). It followed Multnomah County with the second-highest number of total COVID-19 cases at 22,526 and the third-most total deaths at 224 compared to the latter’s 33,569 total cases and 558 total deaths. Marion County has the second highest total number of deaths at 297.
To view regularly updated statistics regarding COVID-19 vaccinations in Oregon visit this page of the OHA website.
