INSIDE
CENSUS: CLATSOP COUNTY’S POPULATION IN 2020
WAS 41,072, A 10.9% INCREASE FROM 2010 A2
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WEEKEND EDITION // SATuRdAY, AuguST 14, 2021
149TH YEAR, NO. 20
$1.50
Hospital
cancels
elective
surgeries
Columbia Memorial’s
annoucement comes as
virus cases grow
By GRIFFIN REILLY
The Astorian
Columbia Memorial Hospital will can-
cel elective surgeries to free up beds for
coronavirus patients as virus cases and hos-
pitalizations rise across Oregon.
The 25-bed Astoria hospital had eight
virus cases in house as of Friday morning
and was not experiencing an immediate
shortage, but made the decision in anticipa-
tion of a surge in the coming days, accord-
ing Nancee Long, the hospital’s director of
communications.
“We’ve seen teenagers here. This is no
longer just a concern for the elderly or the
immune-deficient,” she said.
Oregon Health & Science University
has estimated Oregon will be short by as
many as 500 hospital beds and the state will
have about 1,100 people hospitalized with
COVID-19 by early September.
Oregon broke pandemic records for hos-
pitalizations this week as the delta variant
drove virus case counts higher. As of Friday,
733 people were hospitalized. Gov. Kate
See Hospital, Page A6
State
discloses
outbreak at
care home
Four virus cases reported
at Clatsop Care facility
By GRIFFIN REILLY
The Astorian
The Oregon Health Authority dis-
closed four coronavirus cases at Clatsop
Care Health & Rehabilitation.
The virus cases, contained in the health
authority’s weekly outbreak report, were
reported Aug. 7.
Three of the virus cases were among
staff members, according to Clarissa
Johnson, a Clatsop Care administrator,
while one involved a resident.
The resident, who is believed to have
come in contact with the virus from a
family member who had visited the facil-
ity on 16th Street in Astoria, has been
moved to a coronavirus-only care facil-
ity in Tigard.
Photos by Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
John Bisson, a registered nurse, sits behind the glass at his station where patients receive methadone and other medications at
the Seaside Recovery Center.
Amid pandemic adjustments, clinics use
medicine to manage opioid addiction
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
I
n the last week of January 2020, the
Seaside Recovery Center, a clinic that
uses methadone and other medica-
tion to treat people with opioid addiction,
opened in the city’s south end.
Less than two months later, the clinic
had to rethink how to care for patients,
as did Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare’s
clinic in Warrenton’s Premarq Center.
Quietly operating in nondescript
buildings where their services aren’t out-
wardly advertised, both clinics provide
medication-assisted treatment for opioid
abuse. The medication — methadone
and Suboxone in Seaside; just Subox-
one in Warrenton — does not replace the
euphoric experience of opioids like her-
oin, but works to suppress cravings and
withdrawal.
Medication-assisted treatment is
rooted in the idea that addiction is best
seen as a chronic illness rather than a
moral failing, said Alison Noice, the
executive director of CODA, the Port-
land-based treatment provider that runs
the Seaside facility.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the
clinics had to rapidly adjust to a world
where a setting based on closeness of
care could itself become a health risk.
The Seaside clinic dispenses metha-
done, a heavily regulated pain reliever.
Federal rules are strict about how the
drug can be given to patients, down to
how often patients need to check in and
make direct contact with a nurse. Histor-
ically, patients in the early stages of treat-
ment have needed to visit the clinic six
times a week, often for months, if not
years, before being allowed to leave the
clinic with methadone, Noice said.
These rules held for decades, even as
methadone clinics became more sophis-
ticated in their care and their services
more robust.
The Seaside Recovery Center distributes methadone in small plastic cups for
patients to take.
“Some — I think rightly — over time
have come to feel like those rules were
very, very restrictive, if not almost puni-
tive,” Noice said. “But it’s been very dif-
ficult to get the federal regulations to
change in any way.”
Then came COVID-19 and the need
for more flexibility.
More freedom
Federal and state authorities and the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
came together — “which, honestly, I’ve
never seen them do this way before,”
Noice said — and agreed on two things:
Patients would, for the most part, have
to stay out of clinics, and the pandemic
could not be allowed to interrupt their
medications.
So the feds began to grant clinics like
Seaside Recovery Center the freedom
to determine whether patients could be
trusted to take medicine home with them
— to not sell, abuse or otherwise mis-
handle it — and how often that person
should have to visit the clinic. A patient
who had been dropping by daily could
now do so weekly.
“We actually got to make those deci-
sions based on what we knew about the
patient, and not necessarily just based on
what these very old rules told us we had
to do,” Noice said.
One upshot is that Seaside patients
missed out on a key part of their treat-
ment: group counseling. The clinic tried
to hold electronic sessions, but individ-
ual phone calls between counselors and
patients proved more successful.
Addiction treatment relies on peer
groups; recovery involves building a net-
work that supports a person’s sobriety,
Noice said. For about a month and a half,
the few Seaside patients met in the group
therapy room, but a strong cohort — the
desired number is between 8 and 12,
See Medicine, Page A6
See Outbreak, Page A6
New framing business opens at RiverSea Gallery Homeless strategy
after moving to Astoria in
takes form in Seaside
1987, Rund started work-
By GRIFFIN REILLY
The Astorian
Visitors to RiverSea
Gallery may notice a new
addition.
Monarch Muse Design &
Frame – an independent cus-
tom framing shop started by
Leann Rund – opened within
the Commercial Street gal-
lery in July. The shop offers
design advice, original art
and custom-built frames,
shadow boxes and more.
For many interested in
framing, Rund may already
be a familiar name. Shortly
ing at the Old Town Framing
Co., where she offered much
of the same design advice
and hand-crafted framing
that she’ll continue on her
own with Monarch Muse.
“I love framing and it’s
a great job,” Rund said.
“Usually people are very
happy when they’re get-
ting something framed. You
don’t encounter a lot of
grumpy people when you’re
framing.”
Though many of her cus-
tomers, friends and family
had long urged Rund to start
her own business, she wanted
to wait until she could find
the right shared space that
would allow her to regularly
City hopes for
details by end
of October
By R.J. MARX
The Astorian
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Leann Rund stretches out a sign for her framing business on
her work table in the back of RiverSea Gallery.
interact with clientele of an
already-existing gallery.
Rund’s longtime friend-
ship with RiverSea owner
Jeannine Grafton served as
a gateway for the perfect
See Business, Page A6
SEASIDE — After
public forums, meet-
ings with city department
heads, a listening session,
formation of a task force
and think tank, the City
Council is ready to take
the next steps to address
homelessness.
In July, Clatsop Com-
munity Action housing
liaisons Cheryl Paul and
Jody Anderson went into
the field for about 19 days.
“We had 265 encounters
with unsheltered people,”
Paul said at a City Council
meeting on Monday. “We
average around 13 or 14
people per day.”
Over 1,000 people
are homeless in Clat-
sop County, said Viviana
Matthews, the executive
director of Clatsop Com-
munity Action.
About 35% to 40%
of homeless services in
the county are focused in
Seaside.
The nonprofit agency
matches people to social
See Homeless, Page A6