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The record lines of car queuing up at St. Charles Bend for drive-thru COVID-19 testing are a graphic illustration that cases are rising in Central Oregon.

And it’s going to get worse in the coming weeks and won’t peak until March.

“We’re expecting an increase in hospitalizations in the next week,” Michael Johnson, St. Charles Health System senior data scientist, told Deschutes County commissioners Wednesday morning. “This is our best guess so far.”

The seven-day count of positive COVID-19 cases in Central Oregon’s three counties is over 2,000, Johnson said.

“It’s not just omicron prevalence,” Johnson said of the new variant of COVID-19 that started circulating in the U.S. in December and is now the dominant strain. “It might be other things: Christmas gatherings, the cold weather driving people indoors and hyper-awareness of omicron.”

On Tuesday, people waited for hours in a drive-thru line to get tested.

The hospital saw 360 patients in the drive-thru and performed 1,100 COVID-19 tests, said Lisa Goodman, St. Charles Health System spokeswoman, in an email.

“We saw a record-breaking number of positive cases in Central Oregon over the last seven-day period,” Goodman said. “Because of the prevalence of COVID is so high in our community, persons who are symptomatic should assume they have COVID.

That means they should get tested, if needed and available and stay home and isolate as per (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines.”

And while positive cases are on the rise, the numbers could be far higher as the county’s tracking doesn’t include home tests.

The hospital expanded its drive-thru testing from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

According to the Oregon Health Authority dashboard, over the past seven days, Deschutes County reported 1,097.9 cases per 100,000 people — the highest in the state — and a 29.5% positivity rate. Jefferson County had the second highest infection rate with 738.4 cases per 100,000 people, and its positivity rate was 14.6% over the past seven days. Crook County had 610.1 cases per 100,000 in the same period with a 20.3% positivity rate, according to data posted Tuesday.

The number of cases in a community depends on the population and allows for a more even comparison between counties than just raw case numbers.

Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang said at the meeting Wednesday he’s hearing from the community that the long waits at St. Charles and elsewhere for testing is due to staffing supply constraints.

“People tell me they’re shaking every tree and trying to get an appointment and nothing is available for a week and then there is the challenge with test accessibility,” Chang said. “Is there anything we can do?”

The omicron variant began showing up just a couple of weeks ago in Central Oregon. It has a shorter incubation period and is highly contagious, said Nahad Sadr-Azodi, Deschutes County Health Services director of public health, at the meeting.

“Get vaccinated and get boosted; that’s still working, despite the variant’s changing characteristics,” Sadr-Azodi said. “Wear a mask, physical distancing is still clearly working and good hand hygiene.”