PENDLETON — Umatilla County has dropped to the lowest-ranked county in Oregon for COVID-19 vaccinations per capita, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority.

In all, the county has vaccinated approximately 960 people per 10,000 residents, ranked last in the state, according to state data as of Tuesday, March 2.

“This is just atrocious and this needs to be addressed immediately, in my opinion,” Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer said during a Wednesday, March 3, board of commissioners meeting.

For two weeks, the county was caught second to last in the state in vaccinations per capita, but this week, the county fell to dead last for the first time since vaccine efforts began in December 2020.

In response to the dismal ranking, officials in the meeting approved a letter to be sent to Gov. Kate Brown’s office “on behalf of the Citizens of Umatilla County based upon discrimination and inequities in vaccine allocations,” the letter says.

The official’s letter argues that despite the state’s promises to vaccinate highly vulnerable and infected communities, the state continues to send meager shipments to counties that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.

In total, 7,792 Umatilla County residents have been vaccinated against COVID-19, with 4,661 of those being second doses.

“We are one of the most diverse counties in Oregon, and yet we are not being given any consideration in terms of the vaccine being provided to the county,” Umatilla County Commissioner George Murdock said. “In addition, as everyone knows, we’ve had a high rate of infection, and we have a disproportionate number of residents who are both impacted by coronavirus and who on a daily basis are working on the front lines and are exposed.”

The letter points out that Umatilla County, as well as Morrow and Malheur counties, have each received low vaccine allocations despite having some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates.

The counties hold the three highest COVID-19 testing positivity rates in Oregon, and only recently, as case counts have declined on average, have the counties been lowered in the state’s coronavirus risk categories. As of March 2, the counties ranked last (Umatilla), third to last (Morrow) and fifth to last (Malheur) in the state’s vaccination rankings.

The letter argues that the state is failing at its promises of delivering the vaccine to vulnerable minority communities, noting the three Eastern Oregon counties have some of the highest percentages of Hispanic and Latino populations in the state.

“This is not due to a lack of capacity to vaccinate our residents. We have never even tapped the upper limits of our vaccine allocations,” the letter says. “While equity is high on Oregon’s agenda, this is an embarrassing and inexcusable contradiction.”

County health officials have long said that Umatilla County’s Hispanic and Latino population has been hit disproportionately hard throughout the pandemic, but have resisted publishing data showing this. Approximately 28% of Umatilla County’s population is Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census data.

“Our Hispanic community was hit very hard,” Joe Fiumara, Umatilla County’s public health director, said. “Especially in the food processing and essential worker, frontline working categories. It’s still my contention that, that’s where most of the spread has happened in this county.”

Part of the reason Umatilla County has not received as many doses as other counties is due to its comparatively small Phase 1a population, which includes health care and frontline workers, Fiumara said. He added the county has consistently been able to exhaust its vaccine supply when allocated, and the low numbers “are not for lack of trying.”

In the March 3 meeting, Umatilla County Commissioner Dan Dorran noted Polk County has vaccinated residents at a significantly higher rate than Umatilla County despite having a similar population. The county has nearly 1,800 more residents, but has vaccinated nearly 1,000 more people per 10,000 residents than Umatilla County.

“This is not an issue of capacity by the county to administer vaccination,” Murdock said. “We could administer way more vaccinations than we’re able to at this time. But it continues to be a major problem with the county being supplied with adequate doses in order to keep up.”

Umatilla County health officials have previously estimated that, if provided with ample doses of vaccine, the county has the resources and staffing to vaccinate more than 2,000 people each week.

But for months, the county has been plagued by delayed shipments due to factors like a lack of federal vaccine allocation and inclement weather, forcing the county health department to cancel or postpone events multiple times.

In upcoming weeks, however, Fiumara said Umatilla County’s vaccine allocation could continue to increase due to its large essential workforce, which will soon become eligible, thereby bringing larger allocations to the county per the state’s rollout plan.

“We’re already trying to figure out how many migrant workers we’re talking about, how many food processors we’re talking about, where are they at and how are we going to connect with them,” he said. “Because we know at the end of the month they’re going to be eligible. And we don’t want to wait until then to figure out how we’re going to connect with them.”

Allocated doses are also expected to increase at various stores throughout the county, Fiumara said. Places like Bi-Mart, Walmart, Rite Aid, Safeway and Mirasol could each be seeing increased doses, and new shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are beginning to arrive in the county, providing some hope that more residents will be vaccinated soon enough.

“It’s still not enough, for right now,” Fiumara said. “But it is starting to look like the point of, ‘We have more vaccine than we can get people to come take it,’ is approaching closer and closer every week.”