The Benton County Health Department reported 254 COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks and is considered at Extreme risk by the Oregon Health Authority. The total confirmed cases in Benton County as of Dec. 19 is 1,122 positive cases with a current average positivity rate of 2.8%. 

Compared to the previous two weeks, there has been an increase of 100 COVID-19 diagnoses.

Benton County is in Region 2, which includes Benton, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Polk, and Yamhill Counties. In Region 2, a total of 668 hospital beds are in use out of the 787 beds available, and 87 ICU beds are in use out of the 127 ICU beds available as of Dec. 19. 

TRACE-OSU, an initiative that also focuses on testing students, faculty and staff associated with the university, has so far administered approximately 8,100 COVID-19 tests; these tests were done in Corvallis, OSU-Cascades and at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. In total, 30 cases were found to be positive. These numbers were last updated on Nov. 13, as stated in TRACE-OSU’s website.

The key difference between TRACE-OSU’s numbers and those shown on the OSU COVID-19 webpage is TRACE only reports the numbers from their own project, while the university’s website shows all the numbers provided by the Benton County Health Department.

Since the previous COVID-19 update, Dec. 6, there have been 308 more COVID-19 cases diagnosed in Benton County.