UMATILLA COUNTY — When we look back on 2020 the story that will jump out will be the COVID-19 pandemic and the way it disrupted our everyday lives — even in Umatilla and Morrow counties.

From the day (March 2), the state announced that a man had tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a basketball game at the Weston Middle School gym, nothing was the same. COVID-19 closed schools and businesses, forced the cancelation of a number of events, including the iconic Pendleton Round-Up, the first time the event wasn’t held as scheduled since World War II. After reviewing the top COVID-19-related stories, we compiled a list and then pared it down to the top 10 pandemic stories.

Here’s a glimpse at the top COVID-19 stories that helped shape 2020 for Umatilla and Morrow counties.

1. Umatilla County resident tests presumptive positive for coronavirus

Umatilla County staked its place in the history of the COVID-19 pandemic when it reported Oregon’s third case.

The state announced on March 2 that a man had tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a basketball game at the Weston Middle School gym. The man was also an employee at the Wildhorse Resort & Casino, leading the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to temporarily close Wildhorse and several other facilities in Mission.

The virus was still new enough to the state that the case spurred an Oregon Health Authority teleconference, where State Health Officer Dean Sidelinger tried to temper the seriousness of the development by adding most people would only experience mild symptoms after contracting COVID-19.

But Sidelinger also cautioned that harder days were coming.

“We anticipate that these case numbers will increase and we may see more serious illnesses and possibly even deaths within Oregon,” he said.

The fact that Umatilla County’s first case wasn’t connected with Oregon’s first two documented cases was a harbinger of how fast the virus would spread in a short period of time.

Business continued relatively unabated in the initial days following the first case, but the status quo was fleeting.

Within weeks, the state closed schools and businesses weren’t far behind. By the summer, the county was recording dozens of new COVID-19 cases per day.

2. Vaccines arrive in Umatilla County

In a dreary year filled with illness and death, Umatilla County received a glimmer of hope in turning back the tide on COVID-19.

Daily case numbers still remain high, but the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine meant Umatilla County was administering its first inoculations in mid-December.

Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center on the Umatilla Indian Reservation was the first in the county, and among the first tribes in the Northwest, to begin immunizing locals, prioritizing health care workers before moving on to tribal elders.

“I feel as though this is the first time we have been given a chance to fight back,” a clinic administrator said. “Now, there’s kind of a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Vaccination drives began more than a week later at St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton and Good Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston as health care workers were injected with the Moderna vaccine. Morrow County followed suit on Wednesday, Dec. 30, administering some of their doses to police and public safety staff. Spirits were high at the hospitals as people began to anticipate the end of the pandemic.

According to the Oregon Health Authority, only 277 people have been vaccinated. With vaccine supplies still modest, when the general public will begin gaining access to the vaccine is still an open question.

3. COVID-19 surges in Umatilla County

State and local officials were alarmed by COVID-19 trends in Umatilla County over the summer, as the county outpaced the rest of the state in new cases. The surge started at the end of May and peaked around the end of July before dropping sharply after Umatilla County was sent back to baseline restrictions on Aug. 1.

Hermiston, in particular, had so many cases over the summer that, despite cases later spiking elsewhere in the state, as of Dec. 23 Oregon Health Authority’s data showed the Hermiston ZIP code still has still reported more cases since the start of the pandemic than any other ZIP code in the state.

Umatilla County Public Health officials said the summer surge in Umatilla County was largely driven by people coming to work sick, and many of the Hermiston area’s largest employers saw outbreaks. Lamb Weston’s plant in Hermiston closed down for deep cleaning on June 15 after an outbreak that would eventually affect nearly 200 people.

The summer also saw a surge in deaths after the virus got into Regency Hermiston Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in an outbreak first reported on July 13, which, according to OHA, included 97 cases and 15 deaths linked to the facility.

4. Pandemic forces cancelation of 2020 Pendleton Round-Up

The board resisted as long as it could, but eventually COVID-19 forced it to cancel the 2020 Round-Up. For the first time since World War II, Pendleton did not host a rodeo or any of the other accompanying events.

In the initial months of the pandemic, the Round-Up Association maintained the rodeo would go on as usual during the second full week of September. Even as Gov. Kate Brown announced in May that all of the summer’s large events needed to be canceled or significantly altered, the association kept its cards close to its vest.

In June, the rodeo’s board of directors relented and announced that the 2020 Round-Up was canceled. It immediately pivoted to announcing a new initiative called Let’er Buck Cares, a charity campaign to raise money for organizations economically affected by the cancelation of the rodeo.

Behind the scenes, the Round-Up and its allies had been negotiating directly with the governor’s office to figure out a way to hold the rodeo, going as far as to draft and present a document that showed how the Round-Up would operate with health precautions.

But the Round-Up pulled the plug itself once officials realized hosting a full-sized audience wasn’t an option.

5. Wildhorse clears out guests after employee tests positive for coronavirus

Wildhorse Resort & Casino on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation closed all of its facilities when an employee tested positive for the coronavirus in early March.

Guests were quickly ushered off the premises as officials scrambled to address the impending issue and calm the rising panic.

“In an abundance of caution, Wildhorse Resort & Casino has closed to complete a thorough and deep cleaning as a response to reports of a presumptive positive case of COVID-19,” said spokeswoman Mary Liberty-Traugher that day.

Quickly, the casino’s surrounding areas resembled “a ghost town.” The employee was attending a basketball game at Weston Middle School when they fell seriously ill and required medical attention. They were transported to Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Walla Walla, Washington, where they tested positive.

The case came at the start of what has now been a nearly 10-month pandemic, with no clear end in sight.

6. ‘I wouldn’t put much money on that’; county health director says most schools unlikely to reopen in 2020

When schools initially closed their doors to students in March, teachers and administrators initially anticipated that the break would only be temporary, a short period supplemented by packets and online learning.

But with a few exceptions, most local students never returned to a traditional classroom in 2020 as Umatilla County struggled to keep its COVID-19 case numbers down.

As schools were getting ready to embark on the 2020-21 school year in August, Joe Fiumara, Umatilla County Public Health director, put a damper on schools reopening before the end of the year, saying he wouldn’t “put much money on that.”

The main impediment to reopening in Umatilla County was the area’s testing numbers. To reopen, the county needed to keep its test positivity rate below 5% for three successive weeks. At the time, the county’s rate stubbornly remained in the double digits.

Since then, Gov. Brown has moved the goalposts forward to try to make reopening a more attainable prospect. But Umatilla County continued to fall short of the goals.

The governor recently announced that meeting the metrics are no longer required to reopen in 2021, but school will likely continue to look different in the new year.

7. With COVID confirmed in Pendleton prison, loved ones say not enough is being done to protect those inside

Compared to prisons nationally, which have suffered some of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks since the pandemic began, it took some time before coronavirus reached the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.

The prison announced its first confirmed cases on July 8, and went into quarantine due to an outbreak five days later, at which point 16 inmates and three staff had tested positive, according to officials.

Family members with incarcerated loved ones, confined in close quarters with infection spreading, quickly spoke to the East Oregonian about a variety of concerns regarding the conditions inside the prison and what they called a failure on the prison’s behalf to follow CDC guidelines like wearing a mask and social distancing.

Prison officials said in an email that the institution “followed the guidelines established by the Agency Operations Center in conjunction with the DOC Chief Medical Officer, Oregon Health Authority and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Since the pandemic began, 452 adults in custody at EOCI have tested positive, and four have died. In total, 73 staff have tested positive, with 69 returning to work, according to prison officials.

“These are our husbands, our sons, our fathers, our brothers, our uncles, our loved ones,” said Lydia Jarrell, who stood outside the prison with several other women on July 10, protesting the dangerous conditions of the prison. She spoke about her husband, who she hadn’t seen physically in over four months, and choked back tears. “This is already a scary time as it is, and we’re stuck out here worrying about them in there — helpless — with nothing we can do.”

8. OSU study estimates 17% of Hermiston residents were positive for COVID-19 on July 25-26

As Hermiston’s COVID-19 cases far outpaced the rest of the state, Oregon State University researchers conducted door-to-door testing for COVID-19 on July 25-26.

Based on data from 471 samples collected from 249 randomly selected households, in addition to tests on COVID-19 levels in Hermiston’s wastewater, scientists calculated that 17% of Hermiston residents were positive for COVID-19 that weekend.

They also stated the fact that the positive samples were from neighborhoods across the community showed the virus was widespread throughout the community.

Researchers conducting the tests were met with more suspicion in Hermiston than in previous communities where the TRACE COVID-19 program had been conducted, with a reported 66% of residents who were contacted declining to participate in the free, voluntary tests.

9. Oregon put in ‘two-week freeze’ to slow rapid spread of COVID-19

The pandemic was surging across Oregon to new record-high case counts in November, and in an attempt to curb its spread, Gov. Brown announced the state would return to the safety measures that were in place in March in a “two-week freeze.”

The freeze shuttered gyms, limited restaurants and bars to takeout only and closed event venues. Grocery and retail stores were also limited to 75% capacity, and social and religious gatherings were limited, with the threat of possible fines or arrests if people blatantly disobeyed the precautions.

The move quickly incited deep concern among business owners, who said they would not survive another shutdown.

In Umatilla County, health officials said most cases were being traced back to large social gatherings — mostly parties — that at times exceeded 50 or more people. The majority of the cases were among young people, Joe Fiumara, the county’s public health director, said.

Since then, almost all Oregon counties remain in a form of shutdown similar to that of the freeze, as reported cases, death and hospitalized continued to spike to heights that to some were once unimaginable. Only now are cases slowly beginning to decline on average, but they remain significantly higher than what was being reported in late summer.

10. After weeks of closures due to COVID-19, local businesses began reopening their doors

In May, with coronavirus cases seemingly under control in Umatilla County, local businesses began to reopen when Gov. Brown approved the county’s approval for entering Phase I reopening.

Businesses were slow to reopen due to requirements for personal protective equipment, limited capacity inside businesses, a short turnaround to prepare for reopening, and a general feeling of uncertainty and anxiety over how the community would react to bringing things back to a relative normal.

The first phase allowed restaurants, bars, personal service providers and retailers to reopen with modified accommodations specific to each business sector.

One of the earliest local businesses to see large gatherings of customers was Wagon Wheel Barber Shop on Southeast First Street in Pendleton, as many residents hadn’t had their hair cut in months. Staff wore masks and gloves, and helped customers maintain social distancing. Overall, customers said they were relatively unbothered by the restrictions, as they wore masks and were asked COVID-19 screening questions.

“Life is going to be different now,” one man who received a haircut that day said. “It’s just going to be a part of life. It’s a new reality.”