![]() Throughout the pandemic, his modeling about COVID-19 case rates and hospitalizations has been singled out by policymakers as one of their reasons for imposing or reimposing various public health measures, like mask mandates and restrictions on public life. He’s the Director of the Office of Advanced Analytics and the Lead Data Scientist at OHSU. We start today once again with Peter Graven. This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.ĭave Miller : This is Think Out Loud on OPB, I’m Dave Miller. Contact Editor Les Zaitz for questions: Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. The second strain has been detected in 74 countries and 47 U.S. Monoclonal antibodies are produced in a lab and are meant to be given shortly after infection. It also doesn’t appear to respond to a monoclonal antibody treatment that’s been effective against the original strain. Dubbed BA.2, it is up to 50% more infectious than the original omicron and may cause more severe disease, scientists say. The omicron variant has mutated, as expected, and one of its cousins may be cause for concern, scientists say. Check this webpage for information about where to get a shot. The health authority will keep its 10 high-volume sites open. They include sites at the Hood River County Fairgrounds in Hood River and the Douglas County Courthouse in Reedsport, which will close Saturday, and a site at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany that will close Feb. In the meantime, the health authority announced on Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would wind down its three mobile vaccinations sites in Oregon this month. School boards across the state are considering policies for going forward, including whether to make masks optional after the state mandate lifts. The agency intends to rescind the mask requirement for schools at the end of March, despite what happens with hospitalizations so administrators and educators have time to ensure that they can keep everyone safe. The agency has based its Covid restrictions on Graven’s forecasts. The Oregon Health Authority said that it would lift the mask requirement by the end of March at the latest, and could rescind it sooner if hospitalizations fall more rapidly than expected. Surveys show that 80% of Oregonians are wearing masks indoors and many are refraining from attending large indoor gatherings with people outside their households. Graven said the rapid decline in hospitalizations is due in part to the widespread adherence to Oregon’s indoor mask rule for public places. North central Oregon, covering Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman and Wasco counties, has no free ICU beds, but 10% of other hospital beds were available. In Benton, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties on Thursday, only 2 intensive care beds, about 2%, were free, and less than 1% of the 694 non-ICU beds were available. Some regions continue to face a shortage of beds. Graven expects that to fall to about 400 by March 20. That had declined to about 790 as of Thursday. The number of people hospitalized for Covid peaked at 1,130. The number of cases are still significantly higher than they have been for most of the pandemic, but the decline over the past week provides relief for hospitals operating under severe strain - and will benefit all Oregonians who need timely care in a hospital.” ![]() “This doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods. “We have had a substantial drop in the number of hospitalized patients in Oregon over the past week or so,” Graven said in a statement. Peter Graven, OHSU’s Covid forecaster, said Thursday that he expects hospitalizations to return to the level they were before omicron hit by March 20, about 10 days earlier than expected. Hospitalizations of patients with Covid-19 are declining faster than originally predicted, according to the latest forecast by Oregon Health & Science University.
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