'We really need help': Coronavirus overwhelms rural Oregon

https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/we-really-need-help-coronavirus-overwhelms-rural-oregon-07-18-2020

by SARA CLINE Associated Press/Report For America Saturday, July 18th 2020

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The coronavirus has torn through the small Oregon community where farmers grow crops such as potatoes, onions and grains. In Umatilla County, where Pendleton is located, the rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 is about 16%. That's a measure of how widespread the disease is in the community, and the World Health Organization recommends it stay below 5%.

In the county with a population of 77,000, the virus has infected more than a thousand people and killed nine, overwhelming its limited resources and employees.

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The pandemic sweeping through major U.S. cities is now wreaking havoc on rural communities, with some recording the nation's most new confirmed cases per capita in the past two weeks. The virus is infecting thousands of often impoverished rural residents every day, swamping struggling health care systems and piling responsibility on government workers who often perform multiple jobs they never signed up for.

Officials attribute much of the spread in rural America to outbreaks in workplaces, living facilities and social gatherings. Food processing plants and farms, where people typically work in cramped quarters, have proven to be hot spots.

Umatilla County has Oregon's highest number of confirmed infections per capita, sometimes reporting a figure this month above that of Multnomah County, which is 10 times larger and includes Portland. The surge in Umatilla and most of Oregon's rural counties is driving the state's rise in confirmed cases.

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Other rural counties also are seeing virus cases soar.

Forested Hot Spring County in Arkansas leads the nation in the number of confirmed new cases per capita in the past two weeks, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

Also near the top of the list are even more remote places, such as Scurry and Crockett counties in Texas.

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The fact that many rural jobs can not be done from home has exacerbated the virus's impact, Murdock said. Officials have noted cases where people continued to work despite having minor coronavirus symptoms, which led to outbreaks.

"They are forced to go to work in order to survive. They don't have benefits. You can't telecommute on a production line," he said.

Of Oregon's 23 rural counties, 12 have reported workplace outbreaks at farms or meat and seafood processing plants. Umatilla County has reported six workplace outbreaks since mid-June.

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