The difference between the two words is minor, but after two years it’s something of a milestone for Mark Bennett to refer to an endemic rather than a pandemic.

Bennett, a Baker County commissioner, has also served as the county’s incident commander since March 2020, when COVID-19 caused a worldwide upheaval like no other infectious disease had in a century.

With the county’s number of cases, and its rate of positive tests, plummeting to the lowest levels since the spring of 2020, Bennett said the county is returning to a more normal situation.

Employees from departments who had devoted some of their time to COVID-19 topics are no longer doing so, Bennett said on Monday, March 21.

Although Bennett acknowledged that a new variant could change conditions, at this point he believes those measures are no longer necessary.

The most significant consistent task throughout the pandemic has been the Health Department’s work to investigate cases and do contact tracing — interviewing people who might have been exposed to the virus, Bennett said.

Per state guidance earlier this month, the county is no longer doing those tasks, he said.

The state also ended, as of March 12, the requirement that people wear masks in some indoor public settings, including schools.

Mask requirements remain in effect for health care settings, including the Baker County Health Department at 2200 Fourth St., and on some public transportation.

Nancy Staten, director of the Health Department, said the county reported only one COVID-19 case during the week March 13-19.

The number of tests done in the county that week had not been updated for the entire week before press time. But for the first five days of the week, the total was 130, so the test positivity rate for the week was less than 1%, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

That hadn’t happened in Baker County since late June 2020.

The county also reported a single case for three weeks in 2020, but the number of tests was lower so the positivity rate was higher — July 12-18, Sept. 13-19 and Oct. 11-17.

Staten said county officials plan to meet this week to discuss whether to cease reporting daily case totals. The county temporarily switched to weekly reports in July 2021 until the surge caused by the delta variant began.

For the first 20 days of March, the county had zero or one case on 17 days. That includes zero cases on nine of 11 days from March 10-20.

Staten said that although the Health Department has ceased contact tracing and might reduce the frequency of its data reporting, she encourages residents who have questions or concerns related to COVID-19 to call the agency at 541-523-8211.

Staten also said the Health Department continues to offer COVID-19 vaccines.

Baker County has the fifth-lowest vaccination rate among Oregon’s 36 counties, with 55.8% of residents 18 and older having had at least one dose.