



Eugene and Springfield awoke Wednesday to a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic — Lane County now has contributed to the worldwide death statistics.

County officials Tuesday night and state officials Wednesday morning announced the first Lane County death suspected to have been caused by COVID-19. A Eugene-Springfield area woman, 60, was the first local death.

She died Saturday night after being brought to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend while experiencing cardiac arrest. She was tested for COVID-19 and the positive results were given to the county Tuesday night.

"The physicians who cared for her in the emergency department felt, in their judgment, she was at risk or they saw things that made them suspicious for coronavirus. They tested her at the time they were caring for her," said Dr. James McGovern, VP of medical affairs for PeaceHealth.

The Medical Examiner’s Office will determine the official cause of death.

Earlier Tuesday, health officials announced the first positive test for COVID-19 in Lane County was a 69-year-old man from the Eugene-Springfield area.

The two cases are not related, Lane County Public Health officials said.

The emergence of the two cases in Eugene-Springfield is expected to be only the start. Health officials anticipate the number of cases will rise quickly.

"We can start to expect to see the case number go up. At what rate really depends on the amount of testing we have," said Lane County Public Health Spokesman Jason Davis. "Unfortunately, we’re getting that information sort of in batches. So you’ll probably see very dramatic spikes, but what we know is those tests are happening every day. We’re expecting to see greater capacity."

As of Wednesday morning, 98 Lane County residents had been tested with 15 results pending, Davis said. Those numbers were expected to rise Wednesday.

Seventy-five people in Oregon had tested positive for COVID-19 by noon Wednesday. The two Lane County cases are among 10 new cases announced Wednesday by the Oregon Health Authority: two in Marion County, one in Benton County, two in Washington County and one in Yamhill County.

The new Washington County case, a 71-year-old man, died Tuesday at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, bringing the deaths statewide to three, according to OHA.

The Lane County cases confirmed what local health officials have believed for some time: The novel coronavirus already has been circulating in the area.

"Our community can assume COVID-19 is out there. That underscores why you should practice social distancing, but don’t be afraid of people around you," Davis said. "The initial symptoms (of the woman who died Saturday) started around the third of March and the initial fever on the 10th."

Davis said Lane County Public Health does not yet know if the woman who died sought testing through her primary care doctor, who is not part of the PeaceHealth system, before she was hospitalized. Davis said the first time the woman was tested was Saturday after she arrived at PeaceHealth Riverbend.

McGovern said PeaceHealth is in the process of identifying and notifying caregivers who possibly could have been exposed while she was hospitalized.

Nine Eugene Springfield Fire Department personnel involved in taking the woman to the hospital are self-isolating for 14 days, Davis said.

While Lane County health officials now have new work to do because they are conducting investigations meant to trace the possible spread of the virus around those two local patients, those officials have asked the rest of the community to keep up efforts to isolate, disinfect and wash their hands.

But even those efforts are causing new problems, Davis said.

"We’ve received word that our sanitation system is getting a lot of sanitary wipes ... now clogging the sewage system," Davis said. "Those should be disposed of in a garbage receptacle. We don’t want our vital systems to start going down in addition to everything else that’s going on right now."

Contact reporter Adam Duvernay at aduvernay@registerguard.com or 541-338-2237, and follow him on Twitter @DuvernayOR. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to get unlimited access and support local journalism.