Oregon reports 239 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases, March 17, 2021.

By Paul Hall on Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News Eastern/Southeast Oregon Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News Northeastern Oregon Top Stories

There are three new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 2,349, the Oregon Health Authority reported at 12:01 a.m. today.

Oregon Health Authority reported 239 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, bringing the state total to 160,259

Oregon counties have new outdoor capacity limits for outdoor recreation and outdoor entertainment

Under the direction of Governor Kate Brown, outdoor capacity limits are now updated for outdoor recreation and fitness, and outdoor entertainment for Oregon counties. As of today, outdoor entertainment establishments and outdoor recreation and fitness establishments in all Oregon counties may allow the following:

Lower risk: Maximum 50% occupancy
Moderate risk: Maximum 25% occupancy
High risk: Maximum 15% occupancy
Extreme risk: Maximum 50 people

For updated outdoor capacity limits, please refer to the Sector Risk Level Guidance Chart.

Vaccinations in Oregon

Today, OHA reported that 15,289 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 7,849 doses were administered on March 16 and 7,440 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on March 16.

Today’s vaccine totals are lower than usual due to an outage in the ALERT IIS system that affected several states. It is anticipated that the number of doses from March 15 and 16 will increase over the coming days as providers catch up on submitting data to ALERT IIS.

Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize because providers have 72 hours to report doses administered and technical challenges have caused many providers to lag in their reporting. OHA has been providing technical support to vaccination sites to improve the timeliness of their data entry into the state’s ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).

Oregon has now administered a cumulative total of 1,363,311 first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. To date, 1,777,145 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.

These data are preliminary and subject to change. OHA’s dashboards provide regularly updated vaccination data, and Oregon’s dashboard has been updated today.

COVID-19 hospitalizations

The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 108, which is 11 fewer than yesterday. There are 29 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is four more than yesterday.

The total number of patients in hospital beds may fluctuate between report times. The numbers do not reflect admissions per day, nor the length of hospital stay. Staffing limitations are not captured in this data and may further limit bed capacity.

More information about hospital capacity can be found here.

OHA provides downloadable vaccination data

OHA is now providing access to download the data that powers our vaccination dashboards as a CSV or Excel file. OHA currently posts summary tables for all existing COVID-19 case dashboards that are featured on weekdays, and OHA will now do the same for the vaccine dashboard.

The vaccine summary table is available here.

Cases and deaths

The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (1), Benton (5), Clackamas (15), Clatsop (7), Columbia (2), Coos (10), Crook (1), Curry (1), Deschutes (7), Douglas (8), Grant (6), Jackson (25), Jefferson (2), Josephine (16), Klamath (2), Lane (16), Lincoln (3), Linn (6), Malheur (3), Marion (26), Morrow (1), Multnomah (24), Polk (1), Tillamook (3), Umatilla (13), Union (1), Washington (28), Wheeler (2) and Yamhill (4).

Oregon’s 2,347th COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on March 5 and died on March 14. Location of death is being confirmed. He had underlying conditions.

Oregon’s 2,348th COVID-19 death is an 89-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on Feb. 28 and died on March 13 at his residence. He had underlying conditions.

Oregon’s 2,349th COVID-19 death is a 90-year-old woman in Josephine County who tested positive on March 8 and died on March 16 at her residence. Presence of underlying conditions is being confirmed.

Learn more about COVID-19 vaccinations

To learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine situation in Oregon, visit our webpage, which has a breakdown of distribution and other useful information.