COVID-19 Cases In Oregon Rising Rapidly
By Ethan Tsai
This article was originally published on November 10th, 2020.
As of October 28, the number of COVID-19 cases in Oregon has been growing at an alarming rate, especially among those in their twenties. According to data taken from the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), Oregon was hit hardest in September, with more than 80,000 cases reported in people aged 0–49 years that month alone. Since April, cases have grown at an exponential rate. However, data shows that from June onward, the number of cases per month has began to climb at an unprecedented rate, with the climb of cases slowing down towards October — only topping the total of September by 10,000 cases (in comparison to September topping August by 60,000.) This graph has a trend line that increases and curves up until October, where the curve starts to slow down. This could be due to many other factors aside from better COVID-19 control, such as more people staying inside because of the cold, however, this has not been proven. This signifies that October might just be an outlier, and that November could potentially be much worse than the data would suggest.
Cases Per Age Group
As of the weekly report on October 28, the data shown in OHA weekly reports shows that the age group of 20–29 year old people have the highest gain in cases, even outmatching the wider range of 0–19 year olds. Again, there is no proven explanation for this trend, but it’s likely be due to the fact that younger kids and teenagers are being monitored by parents, while young adults in or freshly out of college would have no supervision, and could likely do whatever they want without repercussions, including going to large gatherings such as parties and other community events. These events could attract people who either neglect the dangers of COVID-19, are falsely informed, or have been peer pressured into attending. Yet, the data shows that after 29 years, the number of cases slowly decline at a mostly constant rate. The graph shows that the majority of the cases are in the 0–49 age range.
This graph is also an accurate summary of all other months’ cases, with data showing the exact same trend for each month: 20–29 year old consistently have the most cases, and the older age groups trend downwards
Gender
Data shows that there are approximately 23,726 females and 22,071 males who have contracted the virus, with 7% of the female cases and 8% of the male cases in Oregon have been hospitalized. There are also 4 cases for non-binary people, and 94 unconfirmed cases, with 7 unconfirmed hospitalized. No confirmed non-binaries have been hospitalized. For the most part, it seems to be evenly distributed across the female and male populations, with fewer numbers for LGBTQ individuals and an array of non-identified gender cases. There is no significant difference between the number of female cases and male cases.
Race
Cases show that there are 20,073 whites, 1,459 blacks, and 1,251 Asian persons that have been infected in Oregon, with approximately 9% of each category being hospitalized. Only 6% of multiracial people out of an infected population of 910, and Pacific Islanders have been hit hardest with 13% out of the 675 cases being hospitalized after contracting the virus. 9% of the 1,091 American Indian and Alaskan Natives cases have been hospitalized. To summarize, all races have a similar hospitalization rate, although it seems more white people have been confirmed infected than other races in Oregon.
Ethnicity
Cases show that 5% of the 16,924 Hispanic people infected with the virus and 9% of the 23,363 non-Hispanic cases have been hospitalized. There have also been 5,691 cases of unknown ethnicity, 296 of which were hospitalized. There is a significant difference between the hospitalization rate, although there will logically be less Hispanic cases than non-Hispanic cases.
The data presented for gender, race and ethnicity do a poor job of presenting an overall picture, as there are many people who were infected but did not to be hospitalized, and countless scores of others who are asymptomatic. To get a clearer picture for these categories, you can go to this website and check the weekly reports for the exact numbers. The data shown above will not include most asymptomatic people, who would not have been diagnosed.
