Watch List/COVID #’s
An average of 10 new cases a day is not enough to get Lane County on the governor’s watch list. Governor Kate Brown released the 10 counties that are considered potential hot spots for the coronavirus if additional precautions are not taken. Lincoln County just north of us was on the list until yesterday. Lincoln and Union County were removed from the watch list due to falling COVID-19 numbers. The governor’s office describes the Watch List as a yellow light meaning proceed with caution because the virus is spreading quickly. Yesterday Lane County added 10 new cases to the list of positive cases bringing the total number to date as 484. There are currently only 5 hospitalizations in the county. Statewide the count rose by 416 yesterday and the total has topped the 18 thousand mark with 18,131 cases. Umatilla county had 101 cases. There were 5 new deaths reported, 2 in Umatilla and 3 in Multnomah.
No City Council Meeting
The Florence City Council Meeting and their work session for Monday is cancelled. The city has one planned meeting for the month of August and that will be at 5:30 on the 17th.
COVID Misinformation
Jason Davis with Lane County Public Health says there is a lot of misinformation being disseminated in Lane County about the coronavirus. Davis says that they are hearing reports of people that went to the free testing sites and decided not to get tested yet still received a positive test result by mail. Davis says the county does not send out test results in the mail, and the rumors seem to be a nationwide scam that is edited to fit specific counties across the U.S.
“The exact verbiage is used nationwide and so we suspect that this is an intentional piece of misinformation that is being proliferated.”
Davis also said that an alarming rate of positive tests are due to community spread. 30.6 percent of cases. He says this is troublesome because there is almost no way to determine the origin of the outbreak in these cases. Just under 35 percent of cases can be traced back to household transmission and 20.4 percent are associated with some sort of event or gathering.
Big Winner at TRC
And a feel good story to wrap up the week. Yesterday Three Rivers Casino Resort revealed that one visitor to the casino won 36 thousand dollars last weekend. The jackpot, on the Tarzan machine which is a progressive machine that shares a connection with several other casinos, was won by Sheldon Powelson. Powelson said he didn’t think his 1 dollar bet would net him the prize.
“So I was figuring that I’d get a portion of that jackpot and my wife who was with me said no, you won 35 thousand dollars.”
POwelson says he and his wife visit the casino at least once a month and said even when they don’t win, it is employees like Mike Bones that make the experience special.
“We love him over there, I mean that’s one of the reasons we do go there to is because of Mike.”
I think a lot of people share that feeling. And Sheldon Powelson gets the additional pleasure of counting all that money.
