County nears threshold for new COVID restrictions

Yamhill County registered its most dramatic increase in new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, pushing it toward the threshold of a set of new “two-week pause” restrictions announced by the state Friday.

The county health department releases weekend counts as a three-day aggregate on Mondays, and reported 86 new cases yesterday, resulting in a total of 1,189. The county’s previous one-day record, set on Oct. 23, was 24 cases.

According to the Oregon Health Authority, the county had 45 new cases on Saturday, and 22 on Sunday.

Oregon set a new daily record itself Saturday with 988 new cases reported.

On Friday, Governor Kate Brown announced she was increasing restrictions in six counties where the disease is spreading rapidly: Malheur, Marion, Multnomah, Jackson and Umatilla counties.

Restrictions there will be in place from Wednesday, Nov. 11, to Nov. 25, and include no visitations to long-term care facilities and reduction of indoor dining from 100 to 50 people. The state is also urging people in those counties to not gather with people living outside their household, but if they do, limit it to six people.

The threshold for counties being added to the two-week pause is a case rate above 200 per 100,000 people over a two-week period.

Brown said Friday that Washington, Baker, Union, Clackamas and Linn counties were close to the threshold. 

In the 10 days since Oct. 30, Yamhill County, with a population of about 107,000, has reported 164 cases.

“It is alarming that recent high case rates are not linked to any specific outbreaks, but rather reflective of sporadic community spread,” Brown said.

“We are seeing in real time how this virus can quickly snowball out of control. This Two-Week Pause is a series of measures and recommendations intended to curb human contact — both through reducing the amount of people we interact with, and the frequency of those encounters. We must stop this virus from spreading. We must preserve our hospital capacity. And we must save lives.”

She warned if transmission rates do not slow, more restrictions could be forthcoming.

Businesses are urged to mandate that employees work from home “to the greatest extent possible.”

Yamhill County reported 33 of the new cases were in the McMinnville zip code, bringing it to 595 cases, a rate of 164.6 per 10,000 residents.

Twenty-one new cases were reported in Newberg, and 13 in Dayton, which has a total of 85 cases, and now the highest rate in the county, at 178.5 per 10,000.

Multiple sources reported to the News-Register that there was an outbreak in Dayton related to a church. County Health and Human Services Director Lindsey Manfrin did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The Oregon Health Authority reported 723 new cases, and four deaths on Monday, bringing the state to 51,155 cases and 734 deaths. There have been 15 deaths reported in the county, but none since early August.

So far, Yamhill County has not seen a noticeable increase in hospitalizations; however, those often lag behind an increase in new cases.

It’s not clear how many county residents are currently hospitalized with the disease. Over the past several weeks, both Willamette Valley Medical Center and Providence Newberg have consistently been among the hospitals reporting they have between one and nine patients with the disease.

Statewide, hospitalizations and deaths have increased.

Currently, there are 266 people hospitalized with the disease statewide. Of those, 217 have confirmed COVID-19, and the remaining 49 are suspected to have it, but have not yet gotten confirmation.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.