Fiumara

UMATILLA COUNTY — Umatilla County is up to 45 confirmed cases of COVID-19 after announcing eight new cases Tuesday, its largest single-day jump since the county began tracking the virus March 2.

But while some models indicate Oregon has passed the virus’ peak as an entire state, Umatilla County Public Health Director Joe Fiumara said it’s unclear where exactly the county is on the timeline of the outbreak.

“Locally, I’m still hesitant to say we’re over the peak,” he said. “It’s not unusual for rural areas to lag behind urban ones when it comes to virus spread.”

According to a county press release, the public health department is conducting intensive contact investigations and have identified seven individuals as close contacts of one of the previously confirmed cases. All of the individuals who tested positive Tuesday are self-isolating and recovering at home.

The county is reporting no deaths from COVID-19, 21 recovered patients and 24 active cases. Individuals are considered recovered when they have been free from symptoms, including fever, cough, shortness of breath and diarrhea, for 72 hours. Three individuals remain hospitalized with COVID-19.

Out of the 676 tests conducted in Umatilla County, 45 have come back positive.

Umatilla County Public Health is continuing to not include demographic information with individual cases, but released its latest “locations trend map” on Tuesday.

According to the map, Hermiston remains the local hotspot with more than 15 reported cases now coming from the county’s most populous city. More than 10 cases have been reported in Umatilla, and Pendleton now appears on the map with somewhere between five and nine confirmed cases.

The map doesn’t provide any information on county ZIP codes that are reporting less than four confirmed cases.

While more data becomes available to identify trends and patterns in the local spread of the virus, Umatilla County Public Health Director Joe Fiumara said the current map has yet to tell much.

“There’s nothing that jumps out really big,” he said. “It’s hard to draw much from the small numbers we have.”

Though the dataset is still hindered by limited numbers, the health department also released on its website its first round of information on the age ranges and sex of the 30 residents who had tested positive as of last Thursday.

The available information on age ranges doesn’t show a clear trend, though eight residents from age 50-59 have tested positive so far, more than any other age range in the county.

The data as of last Thursday also shows that 57% of the county’s confirmed cases are female, and 43% are male, which Fiumara said is “relatively in step with the rest of the state.”

One dataset that’s less dependent on numbers to show a trend is the “epi curve,” which the county will also be releasing each Thursday and will show the number of confirmed cases that began showing symptoms of the virus on a particular date.

According to last Thursday’s numbers, 27 of the county’s cases began showing symptoms between March 23 and April 19, and there was a 19-day break between when the second confirmed case began showing symptoms on Feb. 27 and the third confirmed case showed symptoms on March 18.

“What it shows is our initial cases were kind of an anomaly,” Fiumara said. “And what that suggests is those first individuals were likely infected outside of the county.”

It also means that the virus is still spreading among the community. In fact, Fiumara said the health department’s recent contact investigations have turned up more instances of people who hadn’t been as strict on social distancing and isolating at home.

“There’s a lot of talk about reopening and I get it. It’s really difficult being cooped up with how nice the weather has been out here recently,” he said. “But if we just pull all these things back or stop being careful, all this work to try and limit its spread will have been a waste of time.”

“There’s a lot of talk about reopening and I get it. It’s really difficult being cooped up with how nice the weather has been out here recently. But if we just pull all these things back or stop being careful, all this work to try and limit its spread will have been a waste of time.”

— Umatilla County Public Health Director Joe Fiumara