September 12, 2020 5:10 p.m.

On Saturday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown updated the County Watch List, and said that Umatilla County is moving to Phase 2.

In the past two weeks, Umatilla County had a total of 252 cases for a case rate of 310.5 per 100,000 people. In the past week, the county had 107 cases for a case rate of 131.8 per 100,000 people. The update said excluding adults in custody, the case rate was 87.5 per 100,000, down from 109.7 per 100,000 over the prior week. Over the past two weeks, 17 percent of cases could not be traced to a known source, and the county has averaged 18 cases per day. A release said due to those improvements in the county’s COVID-19 metrics, Umatilla County was approved to move to Phase 2 of reopening.

The Governor also announced that Jackson and Jefferson counties have succeeded in reducing the spread of COVID-19 sufficiently to be removed from the County Watch List. It now includes Malheur, Morrow, and Umatilla counties. No counties were added to the list this week.