Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
January 26, 2022
Latest covid numbers for Indian Country
Since the pandemic
began, and health
officials began tracking
the data, a total of
1,692 people of the
Warm Springs tribal
community have tested
positive for Covid-19,
according to the data as
of January 19, 2022. On
that date there were 74
active cases in the
community, the data
shows. Nevertheless,
this was an
improvement from the
large wave that
happened following the
December holidays.
There were five people
of the community who
were hospitalized with
Covid-19 on January 19.
Since the pandemic
tracking began, 95
people have been
admitted to the hospital
with the virus. There
have been 28 deaths
from covid, the last
being in November
2021.
The national office of the
Indian Health Service has
updated its coronavirus data
showing results through
middle-late part of this
month.
According to the data,
386,055 IHS tests have re-
turned positive for Covid-19
from across Indian Country.
That represents a significant
increase of nearly 3.1 per-
cent from the 374,583 cases
previously reported in mid
January.
The 7-day rolling positiv-
ity rates—that is, for the
most recent week for which
data is available—is very
large, showing a 280-percent
increase since Christmas, and
by almost 97 percent since
January 1.
Altogether, 3,883,054
Latest jobs number
for region very good
from 2019 before the onset
of the pandemic.
Jefferson County added
210 jobs over the past year.
These gains were largely
concentrated in the tribal or-
ganization, according to the
state Employment Depart-
ment report.
Leisure and hospitality
also added 80 jobs, and manu-
facturing, 40 jobs.
The county did post no-
table job losses in private edu-
cation and health services,
and professional and business
services.
Deschutes County, the
Bend-Redmond area: Un-
employment dropped signifi-
cantly in December to 4.3
percent from 4.6 in Novem-
ber.
The unemployment rate is
now only 1 percentage point
above the record low of 3.3
percent before the onset of
the pandemic.
Researchers explore how to make
hatchery steelhead more like wild
Hatchery-raised steelhead
trout have offspring that are
good at gaining size under
hatchery conditions but don’t
survive as well in streams as
steelhead whose parents are
wild fish, new research shows.
It is well established that
hatchery fish make better
brood stock than wild fish,
producing more fish that re-
turn for harvest, Oregon
State University scientist
Michael Blouin said.
On the other hand, hatch-
ery fish produce fewer re-
turning offspring when both
coronavirus tests have been
administered within the
IHS, the results show. That
represents an increase of al-
most 1.1 percent from four
days prior.
Based on the cumulative
percent positive, the highest
rates have been seen in five
IHS areas:
The Navajo Area at 15.6
percent. The Oklahoma
City Area, 14.7 percent.
Phoenix Area, 14.6. The
California Area, 10.8 per-
cent. The Albuquerque
Area, 10.4 percent.
The IHS Portland Area
cumulative number was a
relatively low 8 percent;
though the seven-day roll-
ing average was 26.2 per-
cent.
The Oklahoma City
Area overtook the Phoenix
Area as the region with the
second highest percentage
of cumulative percent posi-
tive tests. The two regions
have nearly identical rates as
of January 23.
The 7-day rolling average
positivity column offers a
more contemporary look at
the impact of the
coronavirus. The data shows
where in Indian Country the
covid cases have been in-
creasing recently.
Based on the 7-day roll-
ing average positivity, all 12
IHS areas are seeing high
rates, continuing the post-
Christmas holiday surge
across every region of In-
dian Country, and indeed
the U.S.
First woman director of National Museum
Cynthia Chavez Lamar
has been named director of
the Smithsonian’s National
Museum of the American
Indian. She is the first Na-
tive woman to be named as
a Smithsonian museum di-
rector.
Ms. Chavez Lamar has
been at the museum most
recently since 2014, and ear-
lier in her career was a mu-
seum intern, and later an as-
sociate curator. She most
recently was the museum’s
acting associate director for
collections and operations.
As director, Chavez
Lamar will oversee the
museum’s three facilities: the
National Museum of the
American Indian on the Na-
Central Oregon posted
strong hiring numbers last
month, and and unemploy-
ment levels continued to
tumble, according to this
week’s update from the Or-
egon Employment Depart-
ment.
The Jefferson County
numbers include most of the
reservation, including the
Agency area.
The unemployment rate
in Jefferson fell to 5.3 per-
cent last month, down from
5.6 percent in November.
The unemployment rate is
fast approaching levels of
February 2020, when it was
4.1 percnet, just before the
first regional impacts from
Covid-19.
Total nonfarm employ-
ment rose by 60 jobs last
month. Strong hiring the past
several months pushed
Jefferson County’s total em-
ployment in line with levels
Page 5
spawn in the wild.
This tradeoff appears to
happen because hatcheries
are inadvertently favoring
genes that promote growth
in the hatchery environment
at a cost to survival in the
wild, he said.
The new research sug-
gests there may be a way to
modify hatchery conditions
so they don’t accidentally
“select” for traits valuable
to juveniles in a fish-raising
environment at the expense
of traits that will be needed
after release.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar
tional Mall in Washington,
D.C., the museum’s George
Gustav Heye Center in
Lower Manhattan, and the
Cultural Resources Center in
Suitland, Maryland. The
Cultural Resources Center
houses the museum’s collec-
tions and its curatorial and
repatriation offices; laborato-
ries and work rooms for con-
servation, collections man-
agement, registration, pho-
tography, film and video; a
computer and information-
resource center; a library; and
indoor and outdoor spaces for
Native cultural care practices
and use of the collections.
She leads efforts to ensure
effective management of
and care for the museum’s
collection, which is com-
posed of more than 1 mil-
lion objects and photographs
and more than 500,000 digi-
tized images, films and other
media documenting Native
communities, events and or-
ganizations.