OHSU coronavirus (COVID-19) response | OHSU News

COVID-19 hospitalizations as of September 24, 2021. (OHSU) 

As of Friday, Sept. 24

OHSU community vaccinations

• OHSU has administered 365,690 vaccine doses through its community vaccination sites, in addition to the 546,166 vaccine doses administered to date through the Oregon Convention Center vaccination site, which is jointly managed by OHSU, Legacy Health, Kaiser Permanente and Providence Health & Services. (For more information about community locations and who is eligible, see “Community COVID-19 vaccination sites” below.)

OHSU staff vaccinations

• As of September 23, OHSU has fully vaccinated 20,804 employees and students, plus an additional 303 who are partially vaccinated. A total of 1,344 employees and students have not yet been vaccinated.  

Patients hospitalized with COVID-19

• OHSU: 41
• Hillsboro Medical Center: 11
• Adventist Health Portland: 24 

Additional OHSU-specific data

• Since Feb. 28, 2020, there have been 169,336 patients tested. Among those, a total of 14,998 COVID-19 cases have been detected; 41 patients are currently in hospital; and, 386 patients have tests pending. There have been 104 in-hospital deaths.
• There have been 34 new detected patient cases since September 23.
• To date, OHSU has completed 31,183 COVID-19 tests for 10,256 staff and students. Of those, 866 tests for 843 staff and students detected COVID-19; 30,253 tests for 9,812 individuals resulted in not detected; 64 tests are pending.

As the state’s academic health center, Oregon Health & Science University remains engaged with state and local public health authorities and health systems across the metro area to coordinate a regional response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to contain the spread of the virus, including through the use of vaccines that first arrived at OHSU on Dec. 15.

Beginning in the earliest days of the pandemic, OHSU activated an emergency operations center that adapted response plans already in place from previous pandemic influenza outbreaks.

OHSU has prepared to treat a surge of patients with COVID-19, while working proactively to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and protect our workforce.

Community COVID-19 vaccination sites

Mobile, drive-through testing

OHSU is committed to ensuring all Oregonians have access to COVID-19 testing and appropriate health care, particularly people of color and other individuals from communities hardest hit by COVID-19. Throughout the course of the pandemic, OHSU offered low-barrier drive-through testing that has tracked surges in case counts, at various points accommodating as many as 700 people a day through sites in Hillsboro, the Oregon Convention Center and the Portland Expo Center.

Learn more about other OHSU COVID-19 testing options and resources.

Patient care

• Patient visitation: Support of friends and family is an important part of healing, however OHSU is restricting visitation due to the current surge in cases with the highly contagious delta variant. Details of OHSU’s current patient visitation policy can be found here. 
• OHSU manages an unprecedented surge of critically ill patients from the delta variant, and health care workers reiterate the importance of people getting vaccinated. “This is a preventable illness,” says Erin Boni, R.N., B.S.N., “This doesn’t have to happen to anyone anymore.”
• OHSU has established a Long COVID-19 Program to provide comprehensive, coordinated care for people experiencing debilitating symptoms months after their infection.
• OHSU has established a series of steps to prepare patients who have recovered from COVID-19 for elective surgery following their illness. It’s believed to be the first published protocol laying out a COVID-era path forward in American medicine.
• OHSU has implemented a “mask on” policy for all patients, visitors and staff inside the hospital. For employees, this means anyone working in a patient-care area, in hallways, and in research labs. All employees who work in patient care areas will receive masks provided by OHSU. OHSU is asking all employees to conserve supplies as much as safely possible to preserve these precious resources for the entire institution and their colleagues.
• OHSU’s research community came together to launch an in-house COVID-19 testing lab on March 24, 2020. The lab is an example of the many collaborations that have been happening at OHSU and in the health care community. In this case, members of the research community rallied to support the clinical community and testing in a drive to combat COVID-19. The lab’s capacity greatly expanded in October 2020.
• In June 2021, OHSU received federal and state funding to dramatically expand the state’s ability to track variants of concern across Oregon and Southwest Washington.
• OHSU’s Telemedicine Program offers an opportunity for patients to consult with licensed clinicians through a telephone or video connection from their home, limiting barriers to health care access. The service has expanded exponentially in response to COVID-19.

Workforce management

• OHSU intends to implement a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for anyone with an OHSU identification badge, to the fullest extent allowed by law.
• OHSU has offered childcare accommodations, including a $7.5 million hardship stipend, to help sustain its workforce during the pandemic.
• A training video OHSU developed to prepare its students and staff to give COVID-19 vaccines is now being used to train California paramedics and emergency medical technicians as that state ramps up its fight against the pandemic.
• OHSU suspended work-related travel beginning the week of March 9, 2020, with exceptions primarily related to clinicians providing patient care to sites around the Portland metro area and Oregon. The goal is to minimize quarantines of health care workers and help to slow the spread of the virus.
• OHSU has instituted a wellness program designed to support clinicians, employees and students during the COVID-19 pandemic. One example is a grant-funded program that paid local restaurants to supply hot meals for high-impact frontline health care workers following the holidays.
• OHSU is promoting physical distancing within the university, including by requiring non-critical function employees to work remotely and minimizing the number of people gathered for in-person meetings through video and teleconferencing alternatives. 

Research and development

• A new forecast by OHSU data scientist Peter Graven, Ph.D., reveals that Oregon hospitals will remain under severe strain over the next two to three months. Beginning early in the pandemic, Graven modeled the projected unchecked spread of the virus and began sharing those projections with state and local policymakers at the onset of the pandemic in Oregon in March of 2020. These projections helped inform Oregon’s “Stay Home, Save Lives” efforts to reduce the spread of the virus and ensure it doesn’t exceed the capacity of health systems to treat a surge of patients who required hospitalization.
• OHSU research published online on April 29 suggests that people previously infected with the novel coronavirus stand to get a much better benefit of protection against new variants if they’re vaccinated. An earlier laboratory study highlighted the importance of stopping the spread of virus variants through vaccination. And another laboratory study shows telltale signals of immunity against new variants in the blood of people 11 months after infection. On July 21, 2021, OHSU scientists co-authored a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association clearly linking age to immune response measured in blood serum.
• An OHSU study aims to better understand the immune system’s response to COVID-19 during and after pregnancy.
• OHSU scientists and physicians are engaged in a multipronged effort across the institution to improve scientific understanding of the novel coronavirus and bring the pandemic under control.
• In November 2020, OHSU announced a partnership with the local nonprofit Self Enhancement Inc. on a pilot study that combines wastewater monitoring with voluntary saliva-based testing of residents in four Portland neighborhoods. Preliminary results are promising, and the project has helped forge connections with historically underserved communities.
• An OHSU-led evidence review, published in June 2020, finds that facial coverings appear to decrease the risk of spreading respiratory illnesses in community settings.
• OHSU data scientists are leading a nationwide collaboration of clinicians, informaticians and other biomedical researchers aims to turn data from hundreds of thousands of medical records from coronavirus patients into effective treatments and predictive analytical tools that could help lessen or end the global pandemic.
• OHSU has joined with other universities and academic medical centers across the country to ease licensing requirements to expedite promising new technologies to diagnose, treat and prevent COVID-19. 

Community measures

• OHSU will offer free screening for COVID-19 among students in K-12 schools across three regions of the state, in a partnership with the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Department of Education.
• OHSU will dramatically increase the region’s capacity to track virus variants, through new investments by federal and state public health authorities. The new initiative harnesses the university’s clinical and research expertise.
• In the war against COVID-19, OHSU is racing to vaccinate as many Oregonians as quickly as possible. Over time, the goal is to drive the virus into submission by cutting off its ability to spread.
• OHSU is deploying three mobile testing vans to increase the availability of testing in Oregon communities lacking easy access. The vans can be easily adapted to transition to vaccinating Oregonians as vaccine availability ramps up in the weeks and months ahead.
• On Dec. 3, Gov. Kate Brown appointed Louis Picker, M.D., as one of two Oregon scientists to independently review the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines that receive emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On Dec. 11, Brown appointed OHSU Chief Administrative Officer Connie Seeley as special advisor for vaccine implementation in Oregon.
• OHSU established a Connected Care Center, available by phone to people throughout Oregon seeking insight about care of symptoms related to COVID-19. The phone number is 833-647-8222.
• OHSU President Danny Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H., FACS, joined other national health care leaders in raising alarm about disparities in health outcomes along racial and socioeconomic lines among those stricken by COVID-19. OHSU researchers confirmed the disproportionate impact of the virus on Black and Hispanic populations with an evidence review published Dec. 1.

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