The Oregon Health Authority this week released a new dashboard that sheds more light on existing health conditions and the progression of the disease of the nearly 2,000 Oregonians who died from COVID-19 since the outbreak last year.
According to the recently released data, 85% of Oregonians who died from the disease had at least one underlying condition. Only 2% truly had no underlying conditions, while the status of 12% of those who died is unknown.
Half of the people who died in Oregon with the coronavirus, according to the data, had cardiovascular disease, making it the most common underlying condition. According to the health authority, the frequency of conditions among those who died is:
- 50% cardiovascular disease
- 34% neurological condition
- 29% diabetes
- 28% other chronic illness
- 22% chronic lung disease
- 20% kidney disease
- 14% former smoker
- 13% obesity
- 8% immunocompromised condition
- 4% liver disease
- 3% current smoker
There is no explanation of how these conditions are spread across age groups. More than half of the people who died in Oregon – 1,005 out of 1,924 – were 80 years old or older.
The new table also contains more information on the symptoms of people who died from the disease, although the data are for the most part dark, with a majority of the people’s symptoms being ‘unknown’.
It also contains a graph showing how many people have died in a compound living situation, which includes long-term care facilities, prisons and shelters.
The new dashboard comes after OHA’s announcement on Wednesday that it would no longer disclose demographic information about each individual death.
OHA released the new dashboard about five months after The Oregonian asked state officials to provide similar information on underlying health conditions.
At the time, spokeswoman Delia Hernández said the state ‘does not publish this data because there is often insufficient information on COVID-19 cases not enough information to provide useful information on the specific conditions contained in the broad categories in the underlying table. ‘
The last time the state released this type of data was in May. At that time, only 109 people in Oregon had died of COVID-19. According to the report, 61.4% who died from the disease also suffered from cardiovascular disease and 46.5% from neurological / neurodevelopmental conditions.
– Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052, [email protected], @lizzzyacker