Oregon reports 368 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases, 3 new deaths
PORTLAND, Ore. — There are three new COVID-19-related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 7,147, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) reported at 12:01 a.m. Friday. OHA reported 368 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. Friday, bringing the state total to 704,515.

Friday was last day for daily media release
Friday was the last day OHA will distribute a daily media release about COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths (including individual death summaries). Information about new COVID-19 cases, current hospitalizations of COVID-19 positive patients and deaths, along with other COVID-19 data, will continue to be available daily on the OHA website, data dashboards and social media platforms. Starting the week of April 4, the cadence of some of OHA’s current COVID-19 reports will change. The COVID-19 vaccination dashboards, the Oregon COVID-19 Case and Testing Counts Statewide dashboard and the Oregon COVID-19 Testing and Outcomes by County dashboard will be published weekly on Wednesdays. The Data Report and Outbreak Report will be published every other week and the Breakthrough Report will be published monthly. Although OHA will no longer distribute a daily media release, OHA will continue to disseminate news releases about COVID-19 when trends merit widespread information sharing. One example is when new eligibility groups for boosters or vaccinations are announced. The daily media releases grew out of the urgent need to communicate quickly evolving COVID-19 trends early in the pandemic. The news releases were sent to media partners seven days a week, including holidays, until July 2021, when the agency switched to weekday distribution. OHA is again adapting to the pandemic as cases and hospitalizations declined following a surge due to Omicron, and members of the public have the knowledge and tools to protect themselves.

COVID-19 Hospitalizations
The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 109, which is one more than Thursday. There are 20 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is three more than Thursday. There are 109 available adult ICU beds out of 674 total (16% availability) and 375 available adult non-ICU beds out of 4,276 (9% availability). 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.

Vaccinations in Oregon
Friday, OHA reported that 7,411 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry March 31. Of that total, 253 were initial doses, 331 were second doses and 787 were third doses and booster doses. The remaining 2,529 doses were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry March 31. The seven-day running average is now 1,894 doses per day. Oregon has now administered 4,199,881 doses of Pfizer Comirnaty, 246,173 doses of Pfizer pediatric, 2,745,130 doses of Moderna and 270,470 doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. As of Friday, 3,176,952 people have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 2,885,592 people have completed a COVID-19 vaccine series. These data are preliminary and subject to change. Updated vaccination data are provided on Oregon’s COVID-19 data dashboards and have been updated Friday.

Daily COVID-19 vaccine dashboard updates
There are a number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered on March 31 that were recorded as “unknown/invalid dose.” This is likely to continue for the next several days due to the newly authorized second booster dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for adults 50 and older and certain immunocompromised individuals. OHA will update the COVID-19 vaccination dashboards Wednesday, April 6, to incorporate these doses.

COVID-19 Cases
The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported Friday are in the following counties: Benton (23), Clackamas (41), Clatsop (4), Columbia (5), Coos (7), Deschutes (13), Douglas (3), Grant (1), Hood River (2), Jackson (5), Jefferson (2), Josephine (3), Klamath (2), Lane (36), Lincoln (5), Linn (7), Malheur (1), Marion (22), Multnomah (124), Tillamook (3), Umatilla (7), Wasco (2), Washington (45) and Yamhill (5).