Oregon Gets Good News Dose in Fighting Coronavirus

Salem, Oregon (AP) —Fighting the coronavirus pandemic, Oregon has taken some good news.

Healthcare workers’ masks are desperately scarce in Oregon, exposing them not only to coronaviruses but to other patients. The state is now receiving millions of masks. N95 mask disinfecting machine will also be introduced.

A team at the University of Portland also designed a ventilator made with a 3D printer. And Walgreens has opened a Dryland test site outside Portland.

Tim Wallerman, a spokesman for the Oregon Pandemic Response Team, said the Butter decontamination system will be installed in Eugene to serve several areas. The system uses hydrogen peroxide to disinfect masks and can disinfect up to 85,000 per day.

“When it comes to masks, this is a real power multiplier,” said Chris Ingersoll, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Emergency Management.

Butter has deployed mask decontamination systems in Ohio, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, and Georgia.

In a global shortage of ventilators, a team at the University of Oregon Health Sciences has devised a low-cost version manufactured using 3D printing technology, the university announced Friday.

“The goal is to give it free to those who need it,” says Albert Qi, traumatic surgeon at OHSU.

Depending on the printer, one ventilator can be manufactured in 3-8 hours and can be run with additional low cost springs. The low-tech ventilator doesn’t require electricity, only a functional oxygen tank, and can be replicated with materials under $ 10, according to the university.

On Friday, Chi and his team applied for an emergency use permit from the Food and Drug Administration and rolled out the design nationwide. If approved, hospitals with access to commercial grade 3D printers can manufacture new ventilators within hours.

Walgreens has opened one of the first COVID-19 test sites in Oregon-Governor Kate Brown has announced a drive-through test in Hillsboro.

“We are moving forward, one step at a time, to reopen the community and safely return to public life,” Brown said. She thanked Walgreens for choosing Oregon as one of the first rapid COVID-19 testing sites in the country.

COVID-19 claimed three more lives in Oregon and increased state death toll to 86, the Oregon Health Department reported. There were 51 new cases of COVID-19 reported, bringing the total number of states to 2,177.

The Oregon Department of Corrections reported that 12 staff and 13 prisoners tested positive for COVID-19. Most of the incidents took place at Shatter Creek Prison, a former Aviation National Guard radar station near North Bend on the coast that was converted into a 302-bed minimum security prison.

All eight cases occurred in the same dormitory, prisoners told The Coose Bay newspaper.

“It’s a kind of nervous tension because we see it getting worse,” said adult Jordon Dean, detained at Shutter Creek. “We are all in contact with the surfaces and areas these people are doing, so we are all waiting to get sick.”

The affected prisoners have been transferred to a facility that provides 24-hour medical care.

According to the Oregon Health Authority, at the end of last week, the state received a total of only 920,000 surgical masks and 270,000 N95 masks.

But this week alone, the state will receive nearly 2 million surgical masks and next week about 4 million KN95 masks. This is similar to the N95 mask.

The Oregon China Council announced Friday that more than 50,000 masks will arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday and be shipped to Oregon. They are a gift from the state government of Fujian, which has been Oregon’s sister state since 1984, the council said.

In most cases, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough, which resolve in a few weeks. For some people, especially older people or those with existing health problems, it can cause more serious illness and death.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky.