A nurse cares for a Covid patient in the intensive care unit at Salem Hospital on Friday, Aug. 20, 2021. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
The number of local patients hospitalized with Covid spiked this week, as did new cases after falling for the past three weeks.
HOSPITAL CAPACITY
The average number of Covid patients at Salem Hospital more than doubled from last week, and the hospital remains very full.
As of Friday, June 24, the hospital had 36 inpatients with Covid, four in the intensive care unit and two on ventilators.
There were 519 of 494 licensed hospital beds in use. The hospital is able to care for more patients than it’s licensed for because of ongoing emergency declarations related to the pandemic.
Lisa Wood, Salem Health spokeswoman, said the number of hospitalized Covid patients over the past week has remained between 16 and 36. Last week, Wood said the daily number was between 15 and 18 Covid inpatients.
Region 2, which is Marion, Polk, Yamhill, Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties, had 50 people hospitalized with Covid as of June 23, compared with 40 the week prior and 53 two weeks ago.
CASES
The number of new Covid cases reported climbed in both Marion and Polk counties.
This data is for the week ending June 23.
Marion County: 130.4 new Covid cases per day on average, a rate of 261.5 cases per 100,000 residents.
That’s up from 90.6 average daily cases for the week ending June 15 and 100.4 average daily cases for the week ending June 8.
16.6% of Covid tests this week were positive, up from 12% last week.
Polk County: 34.9 new Covid cases per day on average, a rate of 291.2 cases per 100,000 residents.
That’s up from an average of 31.7 daily cases the week ending June 15, and 29.3 daily cases the week ending June 8.
23.8% of Covid tests this week were positive, up from 12.8% last week.
Oregon: 1,540.4 new cases per day on average, up from 1,390.7 average daily cases the week prior; 13.6% of tests positive, compared with 12.6% the week prior.
VACCINATION AND BREAKTHROUGH CASES
The Oregon Health Authority switched to a monthly report on breakthrough cases and will release its next report in early July.
MANDATES
Oregon’s mask mandate lifted on March 11 at 11:59 p.m.
-Ardeshir Tabrizian
