PENDLETON — Cars filed into the Pendleton Convention Center on Monday, Feb. 1, for the first of a series of regularly scheduled community COVID-19 testing events hosted by St. Anthony Hospital and the Oregon Health Authority.

“The goal of this is to increase testing in Umatilla County,” said Emily Smith, the director of communications for St. Anthony Hospital.

Smith said the event aims to increase the number of tests administered in the county to help drive down the county’s test positivity rate — the percentage of positive tests out of the total number of tests issued.

“Our percent positive rate is really high,” she said. “The hope is if we can get more people tested, and then more negative tests, it will bring that percentage down — and, of course, identify people who are positive so they can quarantine.”

According to the Oregon Health Authority, Umatilla County has the fourth highest cumulative test positivity rate in the state, with 13.9% of the 52,874 tests administered in the county having returned positive results as of Thursday, Jan. 28. Umatilla County sits behind Malheur, Baker and Morrow counties at the top of the cumulative test positivity chart.

The testing event drew 51 people over the three-hour period, according to Smith, a number she hopes to see increase in the weeks ahead. The testing events are scheduled to take place each Monday in February from 9 a.m. to noon at the Pendleton Convention Center. The testing site will be closed in observance of Presidents Day on Feb. 15.

“We’re hoping to continue through March, if there’s enough interest,” she said.

Smith said the state supplies the COVID-19 tests and testing staff, while the hospital provides additional volunteers to direct traffic and register people and helps advertise the events.

Those seeking a COVID-19 test can register in advance at www.doineedacovid19test.com and should receive the results roughly no more than 48 hours after the test, according to Smith. Testing is free and open to the public regardless of symptoms.

“I think the main goal here is everybody is trying to get that test positivity number down,” said Umatilla County Public Health Department Director Joe Fiumara.

Fiumara has been an outspoken critic of testing asymptomatic people, but said the high test positivity rate that accompanies only testing those who are showing symptoms or have had contact with a COVID-19 carrier result in harsher placement under state guidelines.

“It has a negative effect on things in the community,” Fiumara said of high test positivity rates. “The only way that goes down — unfortunately — is if we test a bunch of people who don’t have the virus.”

Fiumara added that his hesitancy to test asymptomatic people resulted from concerns over possible false positives. He said the quick antigen tests the state is using work best on people that have had known exposures or symptoms. Despite the possibility for a false positive, Fiumara said his department needs to treat every positive test as a true positive, possibly resulting in an unnecessary quarantine period.

“I have been really resistant to doing testing on asymptomatic folks, that being said, I’m not going to get in the way of any of these testing events,” he said. “If anybody wants to help set these up, we will put our support behind it — but I have been clear with OHA since Day 1 that our focus is the case investigation side and now vaccines.”

In addition to a hesitancy to test asymptomatic people, Fiumara added his department has not expanded its own testing operations because the department is unable to provide care to people who may need it. Fiumara said the department advises people to go to clinics that are able to provide follow-up care if they are in need of a test and showing symptoms.

“If they want us to do more testing here, we push people to the clinics because they can receive care,” he said.