Public health officials on Friday linked 18 new coronavirus cases in Clark County to a Vancouver restaurant.
Four employees and 14 customers of Orchards Tap Bar & Grill have tested positive for coronavirus, according to Clark County Public Health.
“Given the number of customers who have tested positive, we’re concerned others may be at risk of getting sick,” Dr. Alan Melnick, director of Clark County Public Health, said in a statement.
The agency is working now to identify people who may have been exposed, said spokesperson Marissa Armstrong.
County officials urge people who visited Orchards Tap Bar & Grill between June 19 and 25 to get tested for coronavirus — even if they don’t have symptoms — and to quarantine at home for two weeks since the day they visited. The county is still investigating, Armstrong said.
“We’re interviewing everyone who tests positive and finding out, of course, anyone who was their close contact, getting in touch with those folks, letting them know they were exposed, asking them to quarantine,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The restaurant closed voluntarily June 25 and is still not open. No one immediately returned a call and email to the restaurant.
“We truly care about the safety of our customers & staff and wanted to share this info as soon as we received it,” the restaurant wrote in a June 26 Facebook post. “Today and the days following, all of our staff will be tested. We will reopen when we know it is safe to do so.”
The county began tracing the outbreak Monday, the release states, after an Orchards Tap employee tested positive for the coronavirus. Three more employees tested positive, and public health employees found customers who had visited during the time when they may have been exposed to the virus. The most recent case linked to the restaurant was reported Thursday.
In May, Vancouver food processor Firestone Pacific Foods had an outbreak of over 110 coronavirus cases that led Washington state officials to suspend Clark County’s application to move to Phase 2 reopening.
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