Shoppers wait in line to enter Walmart in Pendleton on Friday morning. Umatilla County Public Health has said that stay-at-home restrictions and social distancing have aided in tracing those in contact with potential COVID-19 cases.

UMATILLA COUNTY — It was only the third case identified in the entire state when the Oregon Health Authority announced on March 2 that the first Umatilla County resident tested positive for COVID-19.

The county’s second positive case wasn’t found until March 11, which was also someone in close contact with the first person and was expected to test positive. A third case was finally identified on March 25, and another 11 people have tested positive since.

Each time someone tests positive for coronavirus, local health officials are tasked with tracing back that person’s contacts to alert anyone who may have been directly exposed to the virus so they can isolate themselves and monitor symptoms.

But as Umatilla County’s case numbers gradually increased, the initial surge of COVID-19 cases in other Oregon counties inundated local health departments and challenged their effectiveness to track and monitor those who may have been exposed.

“We didn’t think we were overwhelmed, but we think we were right up against those lines,” said Umatilla County Public Health Director Joe Fiumara. “We had to figure out that if this next call goes left instead of right, what are we going to do?”

But the calls kept going right, and Fiumara said he was initially able to deploy all his staff to respond to the first cases and felt they were able to gather fairly complete pictures of each case’s contacts.

Health experts have projected the virus’s incubation period to be anywhere between two to 14 days. However, Fiumara said the department focuses on tracing back 48 hours before the person first began feeling symptomatic and finding people who may have been within 6 feet of the infected individual for at least some extended period of time.

While it’s now recognized that coronavirus can also be spread by people who are asymptomatic, Fiumara said it’s still easiest to be spread by those who are displaying symptoms and his department’s investigations have gone back as many as 10 days.

Investigations have also gotten easier as time has gone on now that most people are staying inside and working from home.

“That’s where social distancing makes a difference,” Fiumara said.

Fiumara said the methodology followed during the county’s first case investigations worked well enough, though he acknowledged they may have had some luck on their side by having had two weeks between the second and third cases being diagnosed.

Other counties weren’t so fortunate.

Earlier this week, The Oregonian reported that state officials privately loosened expectations for county health departments in March due to the challenges they were having tracking cases and monitoring contacts.

“It’s sort of been an accumulating consensus as we would hear from more county health departments that they’re getting overwhelmed, they’re not able to follow up on cases,” Oregon’s Medical Director for Communicable Diseases Dr. Paul Cieslak told The Oregonian. “Washington County, for example, was hit very hard.”

As a result, departments shifted their focus to locating, contacting and monitoring those who were most vulnerable to COVID-19 — people over the age of 60 and or people with underlying health conditions — in a necessary move to prioritize health officials’ time and resources.

While exactly how much this impacted local health officials’ ability to limit the spread of COVID-19 is unknown, Dr. Dean Sidelinger, Oregon’s state health officer and epidemiologist, acknowledged to The Oregonian that it’s possible officials missed some of those who were exposed.

During the first days of the outbreak in Oregon, Fiumara said state health officials likely would have been able to travel to Umatilla County or assist tracking efforts remotely had they too become overwhelmed.

Though the state would still try to help now, Fiumara isn’t confident there’s enough available resources to prevent a future surge of local cases from hindering Umatilla County’s contact tracing.

If that were to happen, Umatilla County would likely follow what other local health departments have done and prioritize who they follow up with and direct their resources toward those most vulnerable.

Though Fiumara is hoping they won’t see a surge, the department is trying to stay prepared in case of one and recently placed an order for 5,000 surgical masks, which cost roughly $1 each, that is expected to be delivered on April 17.