Today, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Education released an update to the Ready Schools, Safe Learners guidance.

Right now, about 175,000 students in Oregon are attending school in person. And last week, Governor Kate Brown issued an executive order requiring all Oregon public schools to offer universal access to hybrid or full in-person instruction by the weeks of March 29 for grades K-5, and April 19 for grades 6-12.

What does this all mean for you, your student, and your school? Some key changes from the guidance:

• There’s a simplified table (Page 15) showing how schools will use county case rates, case counts and test positivity rates to decide when to offer on-site or hybrid learning and when they might limit instruction to distance learning only.
• The updated guidance offers more detail about how schools provide Comprehensive Distance Learning to families that request it (Page 13).
• There are some changes to the size and design of cohorts – those are the stable peer groups that students are part of during the school day (Page 22).
• While elementary school students will continue to be checked for symptoms of or exposure to people with COVID-19 as they enter school, the new guidance allows middle and high school students to screen themselves at home (Page 24).

There are two new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the state’s death toll to 2,324, the Oregon Health Authority reported at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

OHA also reported 178 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of 12:01 a.m. Monday, bringing the state total to 159,788.

Vaccinations in Oregon

Monday, OHA reported that 24,077 new doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry. Of this total, 13,529 doses were administered on March 14 and 10,548 were administered on previous days but were entered into the vaccine registry on March 14. Cumulative daily totals can take several days to finalize.

Oregon has now administered a cumulative total of 1,346,090 first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. To date, 1,642,505 doses of vaccine have been delivered to sites across Oregon.

These data are preliminary and subject to change. OHA’s dashboards provide regularly updated vaccination data, and Oregon’s dashboard has been updated today.

Cases and deaths

The new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases reported today are in the following counties: Baker (1), Benton (5), Clackamas (20), Coos (13), Curry (1), Deschutes (2), Douglas (5), Harney (1), Jackson (22), Jefferson (2), Josephine (3), Klamath (11), Lane (10), Lincoln (1), Linn (1), Marion (7), Multnomah (36), Polk (4), Washington (32) and Yamhill (1).

Oregon’s 2,323rd COVID-19 death is a 69-year-old woman in Columbia County who tested positive on Feb. 19 and died on March 2. Location of death is being confirmed. She had underlying conditions.

Oregon’s 2,324th COVID-19 death is an 85-year-old woman in Columbia County who tested positive on Feb. 19 and died on Feb. 27. Location of death and presence of underlying conditions are being confirmed.

COVID-19 hospitalizations

The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 118, which is 18 more than yesterday. There are 23 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is two more than yesterday. 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. More information about hospital capacity can be found here.