INSIDE: meet one of ‘Our New Neighbors’ | PAGE A3
Tuesday, december 28, 2021
146th year, No. 28
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File
Umatilla County Commisioner John Sha-
fer receives his second dose of the Mod-
erna COVID-19 vaccine from registered
nurse Kelsi Reyes during a vaccination
event April 30, 2021, in Pendleton. New
data in late December could jump the
county’s vaccination rate from almost
59% to just shy of 71%.
County officials
say revised
stats will show
much higher
vaccination rate
Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, flanked by Alan Crawford and Andrew Wildbill, makes his way around the longhouse Friday,
Dec. 24, 2021, during a special honor song presentation at the Annual Christmas Celebration Pow Wow in Mission.
hosted Sams once more at its annual cele-
bration at the mission Longhouse, honoring
him with a song.
UMATILLA COUNTY — Umatilla
County could see its vaccination rate jump
without administering another dose of the
COVID-19 vaccine.
Alisha Lundgren, the assistant direc-
tor of Umatilla County Public Health,
said the Oregon Health Authority recently
contacted the county with new data that
factored in residents who received their
COVID-19 vaccines out-of-state. The
new additions meant the state’s data,
which shows only 56.8% of county resi-
dents 18 and over have received at least
one dose of the vaccine, would jump to
70.9%.
As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 22, the
OHA website still showed the 56.8% rate
while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
shows a similar 58.9% vaccination rate.
Lundgren said she expects OHA to update
its statistics soon, but she couldn’t share
the official data because it belonged to the
state.
While vaccinations administered on
the Umatilla Indian Reservation haven’t
always been factored toward the county
rate, Lundgren said the state already has
made efforts to start including them in
before the latest update.
“Our OHa data team who manage our
data are working on implementing what
we would describe as a ‘bi-directional
data exchange through federal systems,’”
according to Rudy Owens, public affairs
specialist with the Oregon Health Author-
ity. “This will allow us to incorporate data
that captures the COVID-19 vaccine doses
administer in other states into our data.”
Owens also said this is not happening
soon.
“We are still working with the vendor
for our vaccine registry, known as ALERT
IIS, to move this forward and implement
it,” he explained. “We expect this would
happening sometime during in the first
quarter of 2022.”
For county officials, the public release
of the updated vaccination rates will be a
vindicating moment.
“We’ve been beating this drum since
Day 1,” county Commissioner John
shafer said.
See Sams, Page A9
See Stats, Page A9
SAMS TAKES THE HELM AT
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Before he can settle
into his job leading one of the largest national
park systems in the world, Chuck Sams still
needs to pack.
Calling from his Riverside home, Sams
said he has to to clear out his soon-to-be-
former house as he and his family look to
complete the move to Alexandria, Virginia,
a suburb of Washington, d.c., some 2,600
miles away from Pendleton.
“We’re going from 3,200 square feet to
1,100 square feet,” he said. “It’s a challenge,
but we’ll figure it out.”
In his first interview with the East Orego-
nian since he was confirmed and sworn in
as the director of the National Park Service,
sams summarized the past four months,
from the time President Joe Biden announced
his nomination to the day U.S. Secretary of
the Interior Deb Haaland swore in Sams at
the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
“It’s a front-row seat to the u.s. consti-
tution,” he said.
Sams said he already had built up a
rapport with several senators through his
previous nonprofit work, making it easier for
him to build support for his confirmation. At
a time when the U.S. Senate is starkly polar-
ized, the only bump to a confirmation vote
by unanimous voice vote was the attempt
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, made to delay
the vote. But Sams quickly met with Sulli-
van and allayed his concerns enough to move
forward with the vote.
Throughout the entire process, Sams
received vocal support from the Confeder-
ated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reser-
vation. Sams, an enrolled member of the
Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
National Park Service Director Chuck Sams chats with Andrew Wildbill on Friday, Dec. 24,
2021, during the Annual Christmas Celebration Pow Wow at the longhouse in Mission.
CTUIR, worked in tribal government
through early March, and the tribes posted a
series of congratulatory messages as Sams
advanced through his nomination and confir-
mation. On Friday, christmas eve, the tribes
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Eastern Oregon U reacts to omicron
College officials
cautious about
potential booster
requirement for
staff, students
By ANDREW CUTLER
East Oregonian
LA GRANDE — Officials
at eastern Oregon university
are keeping their options open
about instituting cOVId-19
booster shot requirements
amid a sharp national spike
in coronavirus cases driven
by the highly transmissible
omicron variant.
Tim Seydel, EOU’s vice
president for university
advance -
ment, said
the univer-
sity in La
Grande is not
yet requir-
ing boost-
Seydel
ers but has
been having
conversations about a require-
ment, especially in light of the
university of Oregon’s Twit-
ter announcement on Dec. 20
that it would require booster
shots as omicron reached
Oregon, saying students,
faculty and staff should get
the extra dose “as soon as they
are eligible.”
“Our focus probably right
now is continuing to watch
what’s happening, monitor-
ing the situation, and recom-
mendations from health
officials statewide and of
course, locally,” Seydel said.
“There’s no requirement right
now for students or employ-
ees to have a booster as we
start with our winter term.
We’re going to continue to
monitor to see how the situa-
tion evolves.”
Seydel said with so many
moving parts and differing
projections, Eastern Oregon
officials continue to meet on a
weekly basis with the Center
for Human Development to
stay abreast of cOVId-19’s
impact locally.
See Omicron, Page A9
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group, File
Hanna Saunders, a freshman accounting student at East-
ern Oregon University, La Grande, studies in EOU’s library
on Oct. 28, 2021. Officials at the college are keeping their
options open about instituting COVID-19 booster shot re-
quirements amid a sharp national spike in coronavirus cas-
es driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.