ENTERPRISE — A corner may be turning on COVID-19 cases in Wallowa County.

The Oregon Health Authority reported Monday, Oct. 18, just three new COVID-19 cases in the county, on the heels of two cases reported Friday. The total number of cases is currently at 673. There have been no new deaths, keeping the number of COVID-related fatalities at 12. The county’s overall infection rate since the start of the pandemic, per the OHA, is 9.4%. It’s above the state average, which is 8.25%, but ranked 19th among counties. In all, 17 counties have a rate above 10%.

After a highly concerning start to October, the case count in the past week (from Oct. 12-18) was just 21 cases — fewer than half of the 49 cases reported the previous week. For the month of October, there have been 90 cases reported. The daily average for the month, which a week ago was up to 6.9 per day, is now at 5.3 per day.

The counts for the past week were as follows: five on Oct. 12, four on Oct. 13, seven on Oct. 14, two on Oct. 15 and three on Oct. 18 from the weekend. There has not been a double-digit day of cases since Oct. 8, when 11 cases were reported.

Statewide COVID hospitalizations totaled 561, according to Monday’s OHA report, and 140 COVID-19 patients were in an ICU bed.

Region 9 hospitals, which had dropped significantly from their pandemic high of COVID-19 patients, have seen an uptick, with 27 COVID patients in hospitals as of Monday.

Wallowa County also is inching higher in the vaccination rate. As of Oct. 16, there were 3,795 individuals 18 and older — 65.9% of that part of the population — who had received at least one COVID-19 shot, and 61.3% of the demographic has been fully vaccinated. When looking at the overall population, there have been 3,979 people — 55.6% of the population — with at least one shot, according to OHA data, and 51.4% fully vaccinated.

The latest COVID-19 breakthrough report, with data current through Oct. 9, shows there have been a total of 86 breakthrough cases in Wallowa County — cases of people who have received full COVID-19 vaccination but still contracted the disease. That number is up by 14 from the prior report.

At the time of the report, there were 30,687 breakthrough cases reported. Last week’s percentage — 2,490 out of 9,141, or 27.2% — is the highest percentage of breakthrough cases in Oregon to date. There have been breakthrough 292 deaths, putting the survival rate of breakthrough cases at 99.05%.