OPB
More than 1 million vaccines have been administered to Oregonians, state health leaders said Wednesday.
The Oregon Health Authority said one in five people in the state who are likely eligible have received at least one dose.
This news comes as the state adds a third vaccine option to its arsenal, the recently-approved one-dose Johnson & Johnson offering. Health officials 34,000 doses of that shot this week, with smaller shipments likely to follow going forward.
At the same time as Oregon gains ground in the battle against the coronavirus, that battle may also be getting more challenging as COVID-19 mutates into new variants. A test sample sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the end of January by officials in Douglas County, Oregon, was the first known case of one new variant to be found on the contiguous U.S. West Coast, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“The P.1 variant ... appears to be related to business travel outside the United States to and from Brazil,” the Douglas County COVID-19 Response Team said in a statement Tuesday.
The Oregon Health Authority report 27 COVID-19-related deaths Wednesday. More than 2,200 people have died from the virus in the state since the pandemic began.