ENTERPRISE — County commissioners from Wallowa and other Eastern Oregon counties scheduled a conversation Monday afternoon with Gov. Kate Brown about partially opening up businesses in Eastern Oregon.

Late last week, county commissioners of Wallowa County along with Baker, Deschutes, Grant, Malheur, Harney, Jefferson, Union, Lake, Wasco and Klamath counties asked Brown for “a conversation about partly opening up Eastern Oregon.” Not every commissioner signed on to the letter.

Wallowa County Commissioner Susan Roberts, who initiated and wrote the letter, stressed “this was a letter asking for a conversation about a partial opening, not at all a request to open.” Wallowa County sent its letter April 13. Eight other Eastern Oregon counties emailed another Thursday morning.

That afternoon, Roberts said, the governor agreed to talk with the counties Monday.

“We pointed out that Eastern Oregon’s small business economy was really hurting, a lot of our small businesses are hanging on by their teeth, and in rural Oregon we are pretty well distanced anyway,” Roberts said. “We know that to open, we have to show a downward trend in COVID-19 cases. We think we can show that here. We don’t have any so we can’t get much farther down than that.”

Some of Brown’s thoughts seem headed in the same direction.

In a Saturday, April 18, interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Dave Miller, Brown said, “My top priority right now is to protect the health and safety of Oregonians…. But we also have to balance that, at some level, with people’s livelihoods. And I think we can do this. We can do it via geography, county by county. We can do it by region. … We have to try this. We know that not everything we’re going to do is going to work, but we have to try something. We can’t stand still.”

However, Brown emphasized the capacity for testing needed to be in place before lessening restrictions.

In Wallowa County, Ronald Polk, the Chieftain’s medical columnist, expressed concerns about the availability of testing and personal protective gear and the risk to health care workers as well as citizens. He said the only way to know if there is substantial risk is to have test results from an appropriate sampling of residents for COVID-19 infection using a test with sufficient sensitivity and specificity.

“If we knew there were 25 or 50 residents who are currently infected but who are asymptomatic, would the county commissioners still want business to reopen on May 1?” he said. “If we had no positive test results in an adequate sampling, and had a strategy to prevent or identify reintroduction of the virus, then a phased reopening might present an acceptable risk.”

The letter states, in part: “Our businesses are struggling as are others, and the longer the restrictions are in place the more it is damaging their financial well-being. Small businesses can’t survive much longer under these rules, and we hope you can weigh the public health considerations in our counties and the dire economic circumstances our citizens face. We are isolated out here so social or physical distancing is pretty normal. As you know, every business in these areas is considered ‘essential’ to us. We need and want them all back to work soon, preferably by May 1st.”

“We are talking about local survival in these rural areas of Oregon,” the letter continued. “Please consider May 1st as the target date to restart.”

If Eastern Oregon began to partially open, would that mean a stampede of visitors to rural areas? Not in Roberts’ mind.

“They can keep the order on that says you need to stay at home,” Roberts said. “Everyone would stay home as we partially reopen Eastern Oregon. That does not mean that everybody from Portland can dash out here.”

And it’s not a request to open anything.

“It’s just asking the governor to have a conversation with Wallowa County and all of Eastern Oregon,” Roberts said. “We’re looking forward to it.”

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Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that Ron Polk is not a medical doctor.