OHSU Projection: COVID-19 Hospitalizations Could Top 1,000 By September 7th

PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon is the middle of the steepest increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations the state has ever seen.

OHSU Data Scientist Dr. Peter Graven says the latest projections for this 5th wave of the virus show a dire situation, “This one, unfortunately, has some terrible and bad news.”

He says if the current trends continue, over 1,000 Oregonians will be hospitalized with the virus by September 7th.

And he says it’s due to the Delta variant, “The original virus was infecting three additional people. Now it’s infecting eight.”

He says now is the time for more people to become vaccinated and to take action to try to turn the COVID curve around, “We had the stay home campaign, we had the mask mandate, we had the freeze, and we had the back to extreme for a time. In each of these cases…very quickly we were able to flatten the curve. We’re definitely going to need to do that again.”