COVID-19 hospitalizations and patients in intensive care unit beds continue to decline in Oregon, but children represent a disproportionate amount of novel coronavirus cases throughout the state, according to Thursday’s daily update from the Oregon Health Authority.
For the week starting Sept. 12 — the second week of school for many K-12 students — Oregon had 2,068 new pediatric cases, representing 22% of the state’s total. That’s the highest proportion of pediatric cases during the pandemic, topping the 19% of cases during the week of Sept. 5, when there were 2,536 cases of COVID-19 in Oregon children.
Weekly pediatric case counts have been more than 1,000 in Oregon every week since late July and above 2,000 every week since mid-August.
Pediatric cases rates are highest among 12-17-year-olds.
Linn County has had 1,462 pediatric cases during the pandemic, while Benton County has had 569, according to OHA figures.
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On Thursday, the OHA announced 12 new COVID-19 deaths and 1,836 new confirmed and presumptive cases of the illness.
None of the local deaths was in Linn or Benton counties.
Linn County had 65 new cases while Benton County had 22.
During the pandemic, Linn County has had 88 COVID-19 deaths and 10,689 cases.
Benton County has had 28 deaths and 4,706 instances of the disease since March 2020.
Oregon has had 3,661 COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic, out of 318,914 total cases.
The state had 885 hospitalizations on Thursday, 54 fewer than on Wednesday. Of those, 263 patients were in ICUs, which is seven fewer than the previous day.
Adult ICU availability was up to 12 beds, or 7%, on Thursday for Region 2, which includes Linn and Benton counties. There were 60 non-ICU beds available, or 9%.
Oregon reported that 7,964 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry on Thursday.
As of Thursday, the state had 2,717,918 who had received at least one dose of a vaccine and 2,483,452 had completed a vaccine series.
The United States added 1,961 new deaths and 120,770 cases on Thursday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the pandemic, the country has had 680,688 deaths and 42.5 million cases.