A big spike in the virus hits Oregon as the holiday weekend approaches | Coronavirus

Do you have a plan to make a group of friends at a party this weekend of July 4th? Going to the beach for fireworks and a picnic?

The Oregon Health Department has a message to you: Cancel. Now.

The sudden braking demand came Thursday, as the state recorded 375 new positive cases of COVID-19 — 33% above the previous day’s record.

Oregon’s pandemic pattern is changing rapidly. The maximum number of new cases — 88 — was recorded in rural Umatila, eastern Oregon.

Health officials are also seeing larger hotspots and clusters of more cases, fueling their belief by the increased socialization at the time of business “restart” in recent weeks.

State health officials are encouraging Oregons to limit their holiday planning to celebrating with their families directly in their homes.

By Thursday afternoon, the “flight day” on holiday weekends that last from Friday to Sunday, the message was progressively growing.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, Medical Director of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinations, Department of Public Health, OHA Department of Public Health, said:

Cieslak said health officials could do it, even if they had already created an RSVP, by simply warning them to “avoid these multi-family gatherings.”

“What we can do is send a message home and want people to understand it,” Cieslak said.

Due to the surge in incidents on Thursday, a total of 10,000 incidents are about to pass this weekend.

Governor Kate Brown and health professionals have relied on a plea for public cooperation that keeps the entire state at much lower levels of infectious disease. As of Thursday, 209 people were killed in COVID-19 in Oregon. Nationwide, the death toll has exceeded 128,000.

The limits of cooperation were clearly shown on Thursday report Video showing Oregon police officers refusing to wear masks at a coffee shop in Corvallis on Wednesday. As of 1 July, Brown had ordered everyone over the age of 12 to wear a mask indoors in a public place.

Thursday’s state warning attracted a mixture of people interacting in a closed indoor space, not from the same family, despite current state rules allowing the bar to remain open. Guests must wear a mask when entering the bar or restaurant, but the cover can be removed to eat and drink.

Cieslak said the evidence that certain types of companies are driving higher numbers has never seen the situation. At social gatherings at home and elsewhere, people tend to go around for numerous conversations with different people.

Unlike the bar, “you don’t grab your bar stool so you won’t lose it,” Cieslak said.

The state digs deeper into the numbers it gets each day to see if there are patterns.

“We all operate with data that is not perfect,” he said.

The state has learned many lessons since the first positive case in Washington County on February 28th. The state carefully watches over the nursing home. In Oregon. Workplace cases of poor social distance and hygiene have also been addressed faster in the last few months.

Health authorities are currently facing a more difficult pair of challenges.

One is the fragmented growth of positive cases into fragmented, more abundant but less concentrated clusters that are increasingly spread across the Portland and Salem areas.

OHA also sees an increase in positive cases between the ages of 20 and 29. Cieslak referred to statistics showing that people under the age of 50 are less than 1% likely to die of COVID-19. However, the explosive number of cases means that the virus is more likely to infect the elderly or sick Oregon facing hospitalization and death.

Cieslak said the positive and negative impacts will be around July 13th, before the statistics appear in the stats from the weekend of July 4th. It is the time it takes to first reveal the symptoms of an infected person. However, many others who have few or no symptoms can also spread the disease.

These numbers drive policy until the end of the summer, including whether companies can continue to operate and how many of the 243,500 jobs lost in Oregon since February will come back.

OHA spokesman Philip Schmidt said the message to Oregon over the next three days was easy.

“At home, wearing a mask, 6 feet away, spend the holidays-away.”