Oregon’s third presumptive coronavirus case is a casino worker who attended a youth basketball game at a Umatilla County middle school, authorities announced Monday as one of the state’s top health officials said he expects more cases to develop, including ones that could prove fatal.
Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state’s health officer, said the virus will continue to spread in Oregon but that the health system is prepared for the disease.
“We know that people are scared,” he said. “We are learning more and more about this disease every day.”
Of the three Oregon patients, one has mild symptoms but the Oregon Health Authority has declined to give out the conditions of the other two, who are receiving hospital treatment.
Sidelinger continued to urge calm and advise regular hand-washing, even as the epidemiologist acknowledged that having multiple cases of unknown origin in the state could mean that the coronavirus is “fairly widespread in our community.”
But the majority of people who get sick worldwide have a mild course of the disease, Sidelinger said, and those who need to be hospitalized usually have underlying symptoms.
Health officials currently are monitoring 86 Oregonians for symptoms because of their travel patterns or their contact with people known to have COVID-19. They will be tested for the disease only if they develop symptoms within 14 days their last potential exposure.
The man from Umatilla County with coronavirus was taken Saturday from the basketball game at Weston Middle School in Weston, a tiny town near the Oregon-Washington border, to a hospital in Walla Walla, Wash., officials said.
The school gym is closed for a deep cleaning, said authority spokesman Robb Cowie. The gym is detached from the main school building. West Middle School enrolls 250 students in grades four through eight.
People who attended the game have a low risk of exposure to the virus and there is no risk of exposure at the main school, state health officials said.
The Governor’s Office told the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation that a Wildhorse Resort and Casino employee had tested positive for the coronavirus, tribal officials said Monday. The tribes’ board of trustees ordered closed Nixyaawii Community School in Pendleton, as well as Head Start, a daycare and a senior center to sanitize the buildings. The casino, on the tribes’ reservation east of Pendleton, is also closed at least until it’s sanitized.
The casino employee with coronavirus is the same person who attended the youth basketball game.
Chuck Sams, a tribal spokesman, said the man’s position doesn’t put him in “general contact” with casino patrons. The reservation is home to about 3,000 residents; he said about 30,000 people live in the surrounding 50-mile radius.
“The information just went out” this morning, Sams said. “The community is very concerned.”
Saturday’s basketball tournament at Weston Middle School was part of a recreational league for girls in grades four through six that featured a team from Weston as well as teams from Helix, Powder, Heppner and other Umatilla County towns.
The games drew primarily the players and their family members, said Athena-Weston Superintendent Laure Quaresma.
Quaresma said no students in her district’s schools have shown signs of the illness and the schools haven’t done anything new apart from reminding employees, students and parents of the symptoms to watch for and the best tools, including hand-washing, to prevent illness.
The health authority is working with Umatilla County and Washington state to trace people the patient may hav