CHRISTMAS ON THE PRAIRIE | PAGE A3
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
152nd Year • No. 50 • 14 Pages • $1.50
COVID -19
“THERE IS A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE GETTING
VACCINATED AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH MEASURES GOING AWAY.”
—Kimberly Lindsay, Grant County public health administrator
Many rapid tests
currently not
being counted
by the state
Local health officials say
this distorts positivity rates
of rural counties who rely
more on those tests
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Getty Images
VACCINES
COMING
Doses expected for Grant County health,
long-term care workers this month
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
As the state prepares to receive an expected
267,400 COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end
of the year, Grant County will receive doses for
health care workers and long-term care facil-
ity staff and residents around mid-December,
according to Public Health Administrator Kim-
berly Lindsay.
The vaccine, which is taken in two doses,
will be distributed over a four-week span.
The vaccines, made by Pfizer, must be kept at
-94 degrees Fahrenheit and can be stored in a
refrigerator for up to five days, according to
the company’s website.
The hospitals, she said, will administer vac-
Eagle file photo
Grant County Health Department Clinic Manager
Jessica Winegar demonstrates how a COVID-19
test is administered during a session of Grant
County Court last month.
cines to their own staff while federal pharmacy
partners will administer to the care facilities.
Blue Mountain Hospital Emergency Services
Director Rebekah Rand said the hospital has
started the process to become a vaccine provider,
but as of Friday, they do not know when they will
begin administering the vaccine.
“We are taking direction from the Oregon
Authority as they will drive every step of the
process,” she said. “There are certain steps that
must be taken as an organization to adminis-
ter any COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes
available, so like many other hospitals in Ore-
gon, (the hospital district) has started working on
that process but because of the factors including
See Vaccine, Page A14
BY THE NUMBERS
Grant County reported five new
COVID-19 cases since Dec. 2,
bringing the county’s total number
to 142.
The Oregon Health Authority report-
ed Friday that the virus claimed 30
lives — the highest one-day total.
The state is at upwards of 80,000
for total cases and has seen 1,000
deaths since February.
Except for Maine and Hawaii, every
state has seen an uptick in corona-
virus cases.
U.S. deaths topped 3,100 on Thurs-
day, the steepest daily toll in the
pandemic. As of Friday, the virus
has killed 283,568 in the U.S. and 1.5
million worldwide.
Grant County Public Health
Administrator Kimberly Lindsay
said COVID-19 hospitalizations and
intensive care unit patients continue
to trend upward with record-high
COVID-19 hospitalizations. She said,
as of Monday, Grant County’s Re-
gion 7, shared with Deschutes, Har-
ney, Klamath, Jefferson, Lake and
Wheeler counties, had 72 COVID-19
patients hospitalized.
Lindsay said this is a 20-person
increase from Friday’s record high.
Seventeen of of the 72 coronavirus
patients are in ICU care, and eight
people are on ventilators.
Region 7, according to Lindsay, has
five ICU beds available. She said
160 ICU beds are available in the
state.
“These disheartening numbers are
consistent with national trends,”
Lindsay said.
While county health officials com-
ment on regional hospitalization ca-
pacity, both the health department
and the hospital have declined to
comment on intensive care pa-
tients’ specifics, COVID-19 hospital-
izations, the severity of symptoms
and non-identifying demographics
occurring in Grant County to protect
patient privacy.
COVID-19 fallout: Tenants living without water
Some now resorting to Canyon Creek to flush their toilets
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Boring Properties has not
paid utility bills for several
properties in John Day, re-
sulting in an accumulation
of trash and the water being
shut off.
It’s been two weeks since at
least two tenants in John Day have
been able to bathe.
The impacts of COVID-19
have spread beyond those infected:
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued
an executive order prohibiting
evictions for nonpayment of rent
during the pandemic, but a local
landlord has stopped paying the
utilities on the property because
the tenant stopped paying rent.
The city of John Day shut off
water service to several rentals
owned by Boring Properties LLC
just before Thanksgiving because
the company owes the city more
than $2,700 in past due utility fees,
City Manager Nick Green said.
The city was scheduled to dis-
cuss the property past press time
at a city council meeting Dec. 8,
determining whether water ser-
vices should be restored at a loss
to the city and to what extent the
See Fallout, Page A14
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Sean McGee of John Day said he gets water from
Canyon Creek so he can flush his toilet after the
city shut off water to his rental property when
the landlord stopped paying utilities.
A state change in counting COVID-
19 tests will benefit rural Oregon —
once the state figures out how to accu-
rately account for all the tests.
Previously, the state was not count-
ing multiple tests taken by a single
person, which failed
to account for many
negative tests taken
weekly or monthly
by health and long-
term care workers.
However, as the Ore-
gon Health Author-
ity is switching its
Umatilla
County
system, rural county
Public Health health officials say
Director Joe
many of the results
Fiumara
from the rapid tests
they are using, which
are reported differently, are not yet
being counted at all.
Grant County Health Department
Clinic Manager Jessica Winegar said,
like other rural counties, most of its
testing is with the rapid tests. She said
Grant County sent many more than
the 393 rapid tests the state recently
reported.
“I am 100% sure,” she said.
However, she said they cannot
recount them after they go to OHA.
Harney County Public Health
Administrator Nic Calvin said, as a
county that is primarily testing via the
rapid and antigen tests, the county’s
test results are not accurate.
In the first week of November, the
state reported two positives and 79
negatives. In reality, Calvin said, Har-
ney County had between 10 and 20
positive rapid test results that week.
State health officials did not imme-
diately respond to the Eagle’s request
for comment. Eastern Oregon health
officials said the state is aware of the
problem but has not provided a time
frame in which they expect to fix it.
The problem
Umatilla County Public Health
Director Joe Fiumara said rapid tests,
which account for a majority of the
types of tests administered in rural
counties, will not be counted for the
next couple of weeks.
OHA said laboratory tests com-
prise the majority of tests given in
Oregon and as such are the bigger pri-
ority, he said.
Fiumara said, not only does the
delay in counting the test results
impact the severity of county lock-
down measures, which are based in
part on the positivity rate, it also gives
county health officials no way to track,
isolate and respond to positive cases.
“If (rapid tests are) the only testing
happening in a county, you can have
positive cases with a zero percent pos-
itive rate,” he said.
According to OHA’s data, Grant
County had a total of 31 positive
cases last month when the county saw
roughly 95% of its 142 infections.
Sarah Poe, Malheur County’s pub-
lic health administrator and pub-
lic health information officer, said
most health care providers in rural
See Tests, Page A14