Umatilla County in Oregon saw a large spike in cases of the new coronavirus this week that public health officials attributed directly to employees returning to work, particularly those with mild, undiagnosed COVID-19. The county accounted for 17 percent of the Oregon’s record-high increases of 375 new cases Thursday and 344 Friday, despite only holding two percent of Oregon’s population. The Lamb Weston potato factory in Hermiston had 72 confirmed cases, the bulk of Umatilla’s jump. Joseph Fiumara, the county’s public health director, told The Oregonian, “A lot of time, people just don’t think they have the virus. They think it’s allergies. The symptoms are so minor that they go to work for a few days—slight runny nose or scratchy throat—then they go in and get tested and it comes back positive.”
Read it at The Oregonian
