While COVID-19 has leapt forward in many ways over the last year, the negative effects and numbers have taken steps backwards within the last couple months. Two Oregon Counties, Josephine and Tillamook County, have been hit hard with rising numbers of cases, crowding their hospitals. Due to the state’s healthcare system being overwhelmed, they have made the decision to call in for refrigerated trucks, enabling them to hold larger numbers of bodies. 

In South West Oregon, cases are increasing faster than any other state, mostly among the unvaccinated. While we thought numbers were high in the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, Oregon has shown to exceed the numbers of people hospitalized now than at any other time in the longevity of this pandemic. Officials have come to the conclusion that among this surge, it is heavily related to the largely contagious Delta Variant, and a low vaccination rate of about 40% in Josephine County, where most cases are being located. To restate just how prevalent rising COVID-19 numbers are in the present, The Tillamook county board of commissioners stated,

“In the past two weeks, we have had more new positive cases than the first 10 months of the pandemic.”

Larger steps have been taken by the governor of Oregon, including 1,500 national guard troops and crisis teams of healthcare staff being sent to hospitals in the state to aid and assist. While these are helpful measures to combat the severity of the numbers hospitalized, a mask mandate has been reinforced to hopefully flatten the curve of spread as well. 

The fact is that many are dying and many are sick. It is a race against time in Oregon, and this instance shows that this could happen to any state among the United States. On Friday, the 27th of August alone, the Oregon Health Authority reported 20 new deaths, bringing the state’s death toll to 3,115. There have been 268,401 reported cases in the state since the start of the pandemic, and it seems as if that number will only spike. Chesterton Sandscript will keep you updated on not only COVID-19 numbers from other states, but also numbers in our state and school as sickness season rolls in.