2A — THE OBSERVER
TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2020
STATE/REGION
DAILY Cautious optimism about Oregon’s readiness for virus surge
PLANNER Actions today have
to Oregon Public Broad-
casting, Oregon Health
& Science University
said, “While we are con-
cerned that the number of
patients with COVID-19
may increase signifi cantly
over the next several weeks,
we are committed to doing
everything we can to pro-
vide care to all those who
need us.”
Today is Tuesday, April 7,
the 98th day of 2020. There
are 268 days left in the year.
consequences two
or three weeks later
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
By Erin Ross
TODAY
On April 7, 1862, Union
forces led by Gen. Ulyss-
es S. Grant defeated the
Confederates at the Battle of
Shiloh in Tennessee.
ON THIS DATE
In 1798, the Mississippi
Territory was created by
an act of Congress, with
Natchez as the capital.
In 1915, jazz singer-song-
writer Billie Holiday, also
known as “Lady Day,” was
born in Philadelphia.
In 1927, the image and
voice of Commerce Secre-
tary Herbert Hoover were
transmitted live from Wash-
ington to New York in the
fi rst successful long-distance
demonstration of television.
In 1947, auto pioneer Hen-
ry Ford died in Dearborn,
Michigan, at age 83.
In 1953, the U.N. General
Assembly ratifi ed Dag
Hammarskjold of Sweden as
the new secretary-general,
succeeding Trygve Lie of
Norway.
In 1954, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower held a news
conference in which he
spoke of the importance of
containing the spread of
communism in Indochina,
saying, “You have a row
of dominoes set up, you
knock over the fi rst one, and
what will happen to the last
one is the certainty that it
will go over very quickly.”
(This became known as the
“domino theory,” although
Eisenhower did not use that
term.)
In 1962, nearly 1,200
Cuban exiles tried by Cuba
for their roles in the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion were
convicted of treason.
In 1964, IBM introduced
its System/360, the compa-
ny’s fi rst line of compatible
mainframe computers
that gave customers the
option of upgrading from
lower-cost models to more
powerful ones.
In 1966, the U.S. Navy
recovered a hydrogen bomb
that the U.S. Air Force had
lost in the Mediterranean
Sea off Spain following a
B-52 crash.
In 1983, space shuttle
astronauts Story Musgrave
and Don Peterson went on
the fi rst U.S. spacewalk in
almost a decade as they
worked in the open cargo
bay of Challenger for nearly
four hours.
In 1994, civil war erupted
in Rwanda, a day after a
mysterious plane crash
claimed the lives of the
presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi; in the months
that followed, hundreds
of thousands of minority
Tutsi and Hutu moderates
were slaughtered by Hutu
extremists.
In 2006, a British judge
ruled that author Dan Brown
did not steal ideas for “The
Da Vinci Code” from a non-
fi ction work.
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Pick 4: April 3
• 1 p.m.: 2-0-7-2
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• 10 p.m.: 6-4-3-2
DELIVERY ISSUES?
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TODAY’S QUOTE
“Money is in some
respects life’s fi re: it is a
very excellent servant, but a
terrible master.”
— P.T. Barnum, American
showman (born 1810, died
this date in 1891)
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — In mid-
March, one statistic defi ned
how ill-prepared Oregon
was for the expected surge
of coronavirus patients: It
led all states with the lowest
number of staffed hospital
beds per thousand residents.
But after two convulsive
weeks of preparation — by
health care systems, shut-
tered businesses and stay-
at-home residents alike —
state health offi cials now
say they’re cautiously opti-
mistic that Oregon may now
have enough beds to avoid
some of the worst repercus-
sions of the pandemic.
“It appears that we will
not see a dramatic spike
in cases over the next
month here in Oregon,”
state epidemiologist Dr.
Dean Sidelinger said,
citing the latest mod-
eling data from the Uni-
versity of Washington,
speaking to reporters on a
teleconference.
If that is the case, it’s
good news. An increase
in patients could be man-
aged by hospitals, if that
increase is spread out over
enough days and weeks that
it doesn’t overwhelm the
available number of staffed
hospital beds, ventilators
and medical clinicians on
duty.
But there are a lot of
things that still need to go
right for that to happen.
“I think that’s an
important distinction to
make,” cautioned Andrew
Phelps, director of the
Oregon Offi ce of Emer-
gency Management,
speaking on the same call.
“This is not about pre-
dicting the future, it’s about
identifying trends based on
the most current data for the
information that we have.”
Those trends can be used
to help hospitals prepare.
Modeling assumes
continued distancing
The models assume
people are practicing social
distancing, and that they
will continue to do so.
Oregon adds
ventilators
Oregon Health & Science University photo/Kristyna Wentz-Graff
Medical assistant Jillian Zalunardo works with a patient being tested for COVID-19 at the
Oregon Health & Science University drive-through testing site in Hillsboro on March 24.
The site is for OHSU patients who have been directed by their health care provider to get
tested and for fi rst responders with COVID-19 symptoms.
“It appears that we will not see a
dramatic spike in cases over the
next month here in Oregon.”
Dr. Dean Sidelinger, state epidemiologist
Sidelinger says that sec-
ondary data, like data from
traffi c cameras and cell-
phone GPS data, indi-
cates many Oregonians are
staying home. But whether
they’re staying home
enough, or practicing good
social distancing proto-
cols when they do go out,
remains to be seen.
It also depends on
acquiring enough masks
and other personal protec-
tive equipment (or PPE) to
keep doctors from getting
sick, too, and potentially
spreading the virus to their
families.
“If we can accomplish
those things, we are cau-
tiously optimistic that here
in Oregon, the cases seem
to be rising about a level
that will be able to care
for the people who need it
most,” said Sidelinger, who
chose his words carefully to
include qualifi ers like “if,”
“cautiously,” and “seems.”
“What I’m hearing is
that now is not the time to
take the foot off the brake,”
he elaborated.
“We can’t go back to
business as usual like we
had in February.”
He said Oregon needs
to make sure the curve
stays fl at for the rest of the
outbreak.
Sidelinger wasn’t ready
to declare what kind of
impact Oregon’s social dis-
tancing and stay home poli-
cies have had on the spread
of the coronavirus. That’s
because once someone gets
infected, it can take any-
where from a few days to
two weeks for them to start
showing symptoms.
From there, it’s usually
a few days before they seek
medical care, and a few
more days before they get
sick enough to qualify for
testing. And once they’re
tested, it can take a few
days to more than a week
for results to come back.
Essentially, Sidelinger said,
the numbers we see today
refl ect the state of Oregon
two or even three weeks
ago.
Suppression efforts
paying off
Data and case counts
over the next week or so
should help shed light
on how well suppression
efforts have worked. Just 14
days ago, so many visitors
fl ooded Oregon beaches
and hiking trails that towns
along the coast and in the
Columbia Gorge responded
by discouraging nonlo-
cals from visiting. Parks
and public lands agencies
restricted access.
“The actions we take
have consequences two or
three weeks later. We don’t
want to be reacting, we’re
trying to anticipate what’s
happening,” Sidelinger said.
It’s also unclear how
the spread of the virus will
impact different regions,
some of which are less
equipped to handle a surge
in patients than others. GPS
data reported March 24
shows that in the largely
rural stretches of Eastern
Oregon, people were still
traveling more than they
were in the more densely
populated Western Oregon.
But they also have fewer
hospital beds available for
patients, and they generally
don’t have the same fi nan-
cial resources hospitals in
urban and suburban parts of
the state have.
Hospitals are con-
tinuing to prepare for a
potential surge in patients,
said Becky Hultberg, the
president and CEO of the
Oregon Association of Hos-
pitals and Health Systems.
It’s more diffi cult now,
because many of them also
are treating COVID-19
patients.
“They’re looking into
staffi ng, how and when to
discharge patients, even
what to wear,” she said.
In a statement provided
Arlene Schnitz er, prominent Portland
philanthropist and arts lover, dies at age 91
Associated Press
PORTLAND — Arlene
Schnitzer, a philanthropist
who gave away more than
$150 million to thousands
of civic projects in Portland
and helped bring arts in the
city to another level, has
died. She was 91.
Her son, Jordan
Schnitzer, said she died on
Saturday after having some
intestinal issues.
“In the end, at 91, I think
she just decided she’d had
a pretty amazing life,”
Jordan Schnitzer told The
Oregonian/OregonLive.
Portland’s Arlene
Schnitzer Concert Hall
is named after her. She
and her husband, Harold
Schnitzer, who died in 2011
at age 87, helped establish
the Center for Northwest
Art, and a curatorial and
awards program.
“Both my parents were
proud Portlanders,” Jordan
Schnitzer said. “They were
born and educated here. It
was their village, they used
to say. They felt if they
didn’t help build the insti-
tutions in this town, who
would?
The most valuable and
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our communities.
OHSU currently has
79 adult and 29 pediatric
intensive care unit beds.
OHSU said measures like
stopping elective proce-
dures helped make more
beds available.
OHSU also has 178
ventilators for severely ill
patients who can’t breathe
on their own. One hundred
are standard ventilators,
and 19 of them were rented
to help prepare for a surge.
Thirty-eight are single-use
ventilators, and 40 are
anesthesia machines that
can be converted to ven-
tilators as needed. OHSU
also said it currently has
“adequate” staffi ng, but
has plans in place should
more be needed. OHSU did
not say how many of those
beds or ventilators were
currently occupied.
OHSU is one of the bet-
ter-resourced hospitals
in the state, with a large
campus in an urban area.
According to Hultberg,
hospital preparedness can
vary dramatically from one
hospital to another. Hult-
berg said many commu-
nity hospitals in Eastern
Oregon, for example, pri-
marily serve as outpatient
clinics. If someone is seri-
ously ill, those hospitals
have the resources to sta-
bilize them until they can
be moved elsewhere. Those
community hospitals also
have fewer medical cli-
nicians on staff, and less
money to hire more nurses
and doctors in the event of
a surge.
As one measure of hos-
pitals’ improving state of
readiness, there are cur-
rently 762 ventilators in the
state, up from around 680
prior to the pandemic. Thir-
ty-eight COVID-19 patients
are currently on ventilators
across Oregon.
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Bruce Guenther, former
chief curator of the Port-
land Art Museum, said the
Schnitzers transformed
philanthropy by making
large donations, and that
other wealthy patrons begin
doing so also.
Harold and Arlene
Schnitzer donated to a
variety of causes. Recip-
ients included New Ave-
nues for Youth, community
gathering places such as the
Oregon Zoo, schools such
as the University of Oregon
and Lewis and Clark Col-
lege, Jewish cultural agen-
cies such as the Mittleman
Jewish Community Center,
and arts institutions from
the Oregon Symphony and
Oregon Ballet Theatre to
the Portland Opera and
Portland Art Museum.
The couple’s main way
of donating was through the
Harold & Arlene Schnitzer
CARE Foundation, funded
by the sale of the Claremont
Hotel for $88 million.
“I think of her as a big
wave,” said Lucinda Parker,
a painter who met Arlene
when they were both art
students in the 1950s. “She
encouraged and embar-
rassed everyone to do what
FAMILY
OWNED
she was doing. She made
her way. She had no fear.”
Harold and Arlene
Schnitzer met in 1949 and
were married fi ve weeks
later after Arlene proposed.
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