A2 The BulleTin • Thursday, January 13, 2022
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COVID-19 data for Wednesday, Jan. 12
Deschutes County cases: 32,026 (737 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 224 (2 new deaths)
Crook County cases: 4,023 (53 new cases)
Crook County deaths: 62 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 5,041 (110 new cases)
Jefferson County deaths: 70 (1 new death)
Oregon cases: 494,945 (8,760 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 5,845 (31 new deaths)
COVID-19 patients hospitalized at
St. Charles Bend on Wednesday: 43 (5 in iCu).
The Bulletin had been tracking the seven-day average case
count based on state data since local cases were first reported,
until the state stopped providing county-level data for
weekends or holidays. When data is available, The Bulletin will
continue to publish information about the pandemic.
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The highly contagious omi-
cron variant is running ram-
pant nationally and setting
infection records in Oregon.
The supply chain – from at-
home self-tests to staffing at
test sites to laboratory capacity
to process tests – is failing to
keep up with record demand.
Schools are struggling to stay
open. Heath care workers are
struggling to get tested. Public
health guidance is confusing,
and sometimes conflicting.
And public officials have no
satisfying answers.
“The reality is that wide-
spread testing is not available,”
said Julie Sullivan-Springhetti,
a spokesperson for Mult-
nomah County. “No one has
enough tests. The county has
no secret stash. The reality is
we have no more information
than the state does.”
Oregon did set testing re-
cords last week, with results
reported for nearly 260,000
screenings. But state officials
recognized the looming test-
ing crush as early as two weeks
ago and ordered 6 million
rapid antigen test kits, with
each kit containing two tests.
They touted the move, saying
those tests “will be offered to
people around the state for
free so they can find out, at
home, if they are carrying the
virus, and take steps to prevent
its spread.”
But as of Monday, the Ore-
gon Health Authority had re-
ceived only 542,970 kits, about
half the “1.1 million test kits”
it initially said it was expect-
ing by the end of last week.
Nearly all of those are being
distributed to hospitals, not
to be people wanting to test at
home.
The agency did not re-
spond to questions about what
caused the apparent shortfall,
nor would it say how many
more kits it’s expecting this
week. Agency officials say
they still expect to receive all
test kits by early February.
Whether that alleviates the
wider shortages remains to be
seen.
Erica Heartquist, spokesper-
son for the agency, said 90%
of the rapid antigen kits the
agency has received to date
will go to hospitals around the
state for front-line health care
workers – an area of evident
need. The agency said it is
also prioritizing K-12 schools,
Head Start programs and vul-
nerable populations that do
not have ready access to test-
ing.
Heartquist acknowledged
testing is not easily available,
with rapid antigen tests hard
to find and molecular testing,
such as PCR testing, ham-
strung not by supplies but in-
stead by staffing challenges.
Health care “staffing short-
ages have reduced molecular
test availability,” she said in
an email. “There is extremely
high demand for rapid antigen
tests and availability has been
limited nationwide and in Or-
egon.”
Charles Boyle, a spokesper-
son for Gov. Kate Brown, said
in a statement that Oregon was
being impacted by the same
shortages in available tests and
testing supplies that all other
states are experiencing.
Cases in Oregon are at re-
cord levels, averaging 7,250 a
day over the past week, and
testing demands have in-
creased as well.
“It remains as important as
ever,” he said, “for Oregonians
to get vaccinated, get their
booster shots, and wear masks
to protect themselves and their
families from COVID-19 –
these actions will also help our
health care workers and hos-
pitals to ensure they have the
capacity they need to continue
treating patients.”
BY TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian
B
COVID-19 test shortage hits Oregon
PORTLAND
State delays decision
on tolling I-205, I-5
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Morning traffic crosses Boone Bridge on Interstate 5 south of Portland in 2018.
The Oregon Department of Trans-
portation has temporarily postponed
its decision on tolling stretches of in-
terstates 5 and 205 in the Portland area
in the next five years and will consider
a request from Clackamas County for
extra time to hash out regional conges-
tion-pricing plans before tolls are im-
plemented.
Clackamas County Commissioner
Paul Savas requested a delay in voting,
originally scheduled for this month, on
ODOT’s proposal to amend the metro
region’s long-term transportation plan
and its required process for allocating
funding to transportation projects.
ODOT’s delay allows the Oregon
Transportation Commission time to
review the county coordinating com-
mittee’s proposal to develop a com-
prehensive plan for answering “critical
systemwide questions” regarding traffic
diversion mitigation and funding deci-
sions before bringing proposed amend-
ments to an official vote.
County staff will return with updates
from ODOT and recommendations
for next steps at a future session before
ODOT’s proposed amendments are
brought to a vote.
State reports $24M in unemployment fraud in 2020
Final number will likely be higher, but it is
much lower than other states have tallied
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
The Oregon Employment
Department says it has iden-
tified just over $24 million in
fraudulent jobless claims paid
in 2020. That’s according to a
new report from the agency,
its first public attempt at tally-
ing fraud losses during the first
months of the pandemic.
That total includes only
fraud the department has spe-
cifically identified. The agency
acknowledges total fraud losses
were assuredly higher, though
how much higher is unclear.
The state hasn’t tallied 2021
losses yet.
Still, the employment de-
partment says Oregon’s losses
appear to have been a tiny
fraction of fraud reported in
some other states, which esti-
mate their own unemployment
fraud losses in the billions or
tens of billions of dollars. The
U.S. Department of Labor es-
timates total unemployment
fraud losses at more than $50
billion across the 50 states.
“It appears that Oregon, the
amount of fraud that Oregon
experienced, was less than
what occurred in many other
states,” said Sara Cromwell, the
department’s deputy director
for benefits.
That’s partly because of
measures the employment de-
partment took to identify and
stop fraud, she said, and partly
because the same antiquated
computer systems that delayed
payments to legitimately un-
employed Oregonians also
slowed payments to online
thieves. That gave Oregon
more time to identify their
schemes.
Nearly two years into the
pandemic, though, Oregon
says it still cannot estimate its
total fraud losses during 2020.
The state, like the rest of the
nation, was experiencing re-
cord unemployment in the
early months of the pandemic,
and Oregon’s employment de-
partment says it’s been unable
to come up with a reliable fig-
ure.
“Because the volumes and
the methods of ID theft and
attacks were unprecedented,
we don’t have a baseline we can
use to forecast what the ulti-
mate number will be,” Crom-
well said.
“We have made efforts to
gauge that,” she said, “but ef-
forts need to be validated be-
fore we can go public with
(fraud) rates.”
Unemployment fraud
soared during the pandemic
as thieves around the country
and around the globe sought
to cash in on new federal ben-
efits programs that provided
an enormous infusion of aid
to people laid off as a result of
COVID-19. States struggled
to keep up with demand from
jobless workers, let alone mon-
itor claims for identity theft
and other fraudulent schemes.
Until this month’s report,
Oregon had refused to pro-
vide any data about possible
Find it all online bendbulletin.com
fraud losses. The employment
department, which has an
unusual and broad exemp-
tion from state public records
law, said it feared that releas-
ing any information about its
fraud losses could invite online
thieves to target the state.
The new report contains
only basic information, which
the department said would be
of no use to thieves. It tallies
$24 million in suspected or
proven fraud, the vast major-
ity perpetrated by individuals.
It has identified $3 million in
losses connected to identity
theft, the kind of fraud that
online gangs used to steal the
most money in other states.
Oregon has recovered more
than $1 million in fraudu-
lent payments from 2020, ac-
cording to the employment
department. The agency said
four people have been con-
victed in unemployment
fraud cases since the start of
2020, and three more cases are
pending.
The employment depart-
ment says it has identified 19
other cases of suspected fraud
it expects to refer for future
prosecution and is working to
find more.
On Tuesday, employment
department Director David
Gerstenfeld stood by his de-
cision to delay reporting of
fraud losses until now. He said
some benefits programs, nota-
bly Pandemic Unemployment
Assistance, faced nearly con-
tinuous attacks until that pro-
gram for self-employed work-
ers expired last year.
Anything the department
said earlier about how it was
responding to fraud risked in-
viting unwelcome attention
from gangs of cybercriminals,
Gerstenfeld said.
“The amount of risk of it
tipping someone off may not
be huge, but the consequences
of that risk if it were to come
true, as we have seen in some
other states, can be massive,”
he said.
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