'Strike Team' Sent To Yakima Valley To Slow Coronavirus Spread

YAKIMA COUNTY, WA — A "strike team" of infection specialists has been deployed to Yakima Valley as the area struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

Yakima County remains one of Washington's hardest hit counties: with 2,958 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, Yakima is second only to King County when it comes to infections, but has only a fraction of King's total population.

To help the struggling Yakima Valley, the Washington State Department of Health deployed a 10-person strike team on May 11 to assist and support the Yakima Health District in their response to the pandemic.

After the team arrived, they realized they needed even more support, and called in two additional specialists from the Centers for Disease Control.

“Our priority, our focus, is to make sure we are able to prevent the spread of infection in places where people are in close quarters,” said strike team leader Dr. Scott Lindquist. “We realized that there was a need for additional support to do that successfully, which is why we requested extra support from the CDC.”

Since their deployment, the team has primarily focused their work investigating and containing outbreaks at nursing homes and other assisted living facilities, but they've also tested outbreaks at a fruit packing plant, a meat packing plant, and a local jail. Now the team is working to create a guide document to help farmworkers handle the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this month, workers at several Yakima Valley warehouses went on strike to protest what they believed were a lack of adequate coronavirus protections in their workplaces.

One of the CDC agents deployed to help the strike team is creating a data dashboard to help the public track the spread of the virus within Yakima County. The DOH says that dashboard should be finalized and published sometime next week.

The Yakima Health District says they are grateful for the support, and believe they have made large steps towards containing the virus.

"While we continue to struggle with COVID-19 outbreaks and growing numbers in Yakima County, we have quickly developed innovative solutions to help stop the spread across businesses, long-term care facilities, essential workers, and the general community,” said Yakima Health District Executive Director Andre Fresco.