Umatilla County Commisioner John Shafer receives his second dose of the Moderna 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%.

Umatilla County could see its vaccination rate jump without administering another dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Alisha Lundgren, the assistant director 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 residents 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 Authority. “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.

Given Umatilla County’s shared border with Washington, Shafer said it was logical that many county residents would seek vaccinations north of the state border. Milton-Freewater residents or veterans who get their medical care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs could go to Walla Walla to get the shot. Hermiston and Umatilla residents could get the shot in Tri-Cities by traveling 40 minutes or less.

Shafer said the county grew especially frustrated when state officials would use Umatilla County as an example of a county that needed to do better in vaccinating its population during press conferences. Shafer said the state was aware the county was missing out-of-state data from its count.

Lundgren said the potential statistical boost from out-of-state vaccinations should give residents more confidence that their neighbors are vaccinated. She added the updated number will not include minors. Children as young as 5 years old are eligible for the vaccine.

Despite the anticipated update to Umatilla County’s COVID-19 statistics than previously understood, the county is not out of the woods quite yet. The county still is short of OHA’s 80% goal and the omicron variant is starting to sweep the country. Although Umatilla County’s daily case count remains low compared to the delta variant wave over the summer, Shafer said the public health department is working hard to encourage residents to get the booster shot to further protect themselves from the latest variant.

Editor’s Note

The East Oregonian updated this article Friday, Dec. 24, with comments from the Oregon Heath Authority.