THREAD: A week after Deschutes County helped lead the the charge to reopen Oregon, an outbreak of new COVID-19 cases is testing the public health system’s ability to track and contain the virus. 1/10

Contact tracers in Deschutes have investigated 26 new positive test results since May 15, when the county entered Phase 1 of a reopening plan.

What the investigators found shows a changing portrait of the pandemic’s victims in Central Oregon. 2/10

“Our largest age group is 20 to 29 years,” said Deschutes’ public health preparedness coordinator Morgan Emerson.

Previously, those infected in Central Oregon's most populous county tended to be older. 3/10

And how they got sick tended to be unknown, travel-related, or from a member of the same household. But since reopening, Emerson said most of the positive cases have been identified via contact tracing. & that work points to risk factors guaranteed to wreck your summer fun. 4/10

At least 18 of the most recently infected people were exposed to the virus through social gatherings attended by multiple families.

Emerson said the outbreak appears to be contained via tracing and voluntary isolations. 5/10

County health dept. declined to give details about the type of gatherings, citing health privacy laws, but Emerson said the increase in cases was not linked to a particular business, occupational hazard or housing. 6/10

Which makes this Memorial Day weekend FRAUGHT. with relaxed restrictions and residents weary of social isolation, health officials are braced for potentially deadly barbecues. 7/10

“All it takes is one COVID-19 positive person to attend a barbecue, or a block party, or a picnic, and then we’ll have another situation where we are investigating multiple cases,” Emerson said.

The last situation took all the existing resources for tracing. 8/10

Deschutes was permitted by state health authorities to reopen despite having a fraction of the requisite number of contact tracers on staff. The county employs six full time positions, and elected officials promised to ramp up, if needed. 9/10

State officials and Gov. Kate Brown have warned counties that reopened to meet health metrics around contact tracing, testing and hospitalizations. If any county fails to meet essential marks, they risk returning to the full restrictions under Brown’s stay at home order. 10/10