Walla Walla County’s two most recent positive cases of COVID-19, announced Tuesday evening, are a man and a woman linked to a workplace exposure in the Burbank area.

This is where cases for neighboring Benton and Franklin counties have risen as well, said Meghan DeBolt, director of the Walla Walla County’s Department of Public Health.

Seven of the county’s 16 current cases stem from exposure to that initial case, she said.

Although the most recent data from University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests the state is ahead of the previously predicted peak time for the coronavirus in the state — and is possibly on the downhill side of that curve — it’s important for people here to remember that the Walla Walla area is likely a few weeks behind what health officials are seeing in the Puget Sound area, DeBolt said Tuesday.

Nonetheless, there has been a sharp decrease in people presenting to emergency medicine departments with coronavirus-like symptoms, she said.

If there is a bright spot in this pandemic, it’s that people seem to be finally realizing where to go for what level of medical care, DeBolt said.

Here and elsewhere, people can overuse emergency rooms for problems that should be treated with other kinds of medical care.

Now, DeBolt said, people don’t want to go to the hospital if they can help it and instead are appropriately seeking help from primary doctors and walk-in clinics first.

“People are seeing and valuing the health care system,” she said. “That alleviates the burden on the system so people who do need emergency room care can get it.”