November 6, 2020 4:50 p.m.

On Friday Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced new measures pausing social activities to help stop the rapid spread of COVID-19 in counties where community transmission is on the rise.

A release said the measures will be in effect for two weeks, from November 11th to November 25th for Malheur, Marion, Multnomah, Jackson and Umatilla counties. Based on increasing statewide case counts, as well as increased sporadic case rates in those five counties, the new public health measures are an effort to save lives in Oregon, according to Brown.

Five additional counties – Washington, Baker, Union, Clackamas and Linn, are close to the COVID-19 thresholds that would necessitate adding them to the Two-Week Pause. Staff with the Oregon Health Authority will examine their COVID-19 metrics on Monday to determine if those counties qualify.

The two-week pause measures include:

*Urging all businesses to mandate work from home to the greatest extent possible.

*Pausing long-term care facility visits that take place indoors to protect staff and residents.

*Reducing maximum restaurant capacity to 50 people, including customers and staff, for indoor dining with a maximum party size of six.

*Reducing the maximum capacity for other indoor activities to 50 people

*Limiting social gatherings to an individual’s household or no more than six people if the gathering includes people from outside the household. Also reducing the frequency of those social gatherings and keeping the same six people in a social gathering circle.

The release said the Two-Week Pause is being instituted in counties with a case rate above 200 per 100,000 people over a two-week period, or more than 60 cases over a two-week period for counties with less than 30,000 people. These measures replace the County Watch List process that Governor Brown instituted in July.