Governor Brown announces a "two-week pause" on social gatherings for five counties to slow COVID
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PORTLAND, Ore. - Governor Kate Brown announced today (November 6, 2020) a 2-week pause for five Oregon counties due to a second wave spike in COVID-19 cases. This is part of a renewed push to slow the spread and second wave of COVID-19 infections. The two-week pause takes effect on Wednesday and runs through Thanksgiving.
The pause prohibits visits to long-term care facilities, encourages work from home, sets capacity limits at restaurants to 50 people (including guests and employees), and recommends not private gatherings of t six people or less.
The pause currently applies to Multnomah, Marion, Jackson, Malheur, and Umatilla Counties. Additionally five counties - Washington, Clackamas, Linn, Baker, and Union - are on the bubble for risk of entering the pause phase.
“This is meant to be a wake-up call for people,” said Governor Brown. “If we don’t see the numbers trend down, other closures will be imminent.”
The pause will apply to counties with more than 200 cases per 100,000 people over two weeks or more than 60 cases over the same span for counties with fewer than 30,000 people.
“It is alarming that recent high case rates are not linked to any specific outbreaks, but rather reflective of sporadic community spread,” said Governor Brown. “We are seeing in real time how this virus can quickly snowball out of control. This Two-Week Pause is a series of measures and recommendations intended to curb human contact — both through reducing the amount of people we interact with, and the frequency of those encounters. We must stop this virus from spreading. We must preserve our hospital capacity. And we must save lives.”
Rachael Banks, director of public health for the Oregon Health Authority, said she believes the pause will be effective in slowing spread – if Oregonians heed the guidance. “We’ve seen how these sorts of measures have stopped spread,” she said.
The Two-Week Pause measures include:
Urging all businesses to mandate work from home to the greatest extent possible.
Pausing long-term care facility visits that take place indoors to protect staff and residents.
Reducing maximum restaurant capacity to 50 people (including customers and staff) for indoor dining, with a maximum party size of six. Continuing to encourage outdoor dining and take out.
Reducing the maximum capacity of other indoor activities to 50 people (includes gyms, fitness organizations/studios, bowling alleys, ice rinks, indoor sports, pools, and museums).
Limiting social gatherings to your household, or no more than six people if the gathering includes those from outside your household, reducing the frequency of those social gatherings (significantly in a two-week period), and keeping the same six people in your social gathering circle.
Governor Brown added: “I am also calling on Congress to pass another COVID-19 relief package immediately when they return to DC—including another $600 weekly benefit in enhanced Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation—due to the increase of COVID-19 cases and the need for rollbacks both here in Oregon and nationwide.”
Watch the press conference above or here.