People line up to get the coronavirus vaccine at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds in April.

Sixty percent of Clatsop County residents are vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The county views the mark as progress, but also a sign the outreach has a ways to go.

The county has set a goal of having 70% of the population — 27,533 people — vaccinated to try to reach herd immunity against the virus. The county said 23,835 people — 60% — were vaccinated as of Wednesday.

With the highly transmissible delta variant leading to a surge in illnesses and hospitalizations, the county doesn’t know if the original 70% target will be as effective as intended.

“At this point, the more (people) that are vaccinated the better,” Tom Bennett, a county spokesman, said.

Vaccination rates in the county have followed Oregon’s overall arc, the county noted: high demand when vaccines first became available in the winter, followed by a plummet in spring and summer once all of the people eager to get a vaccine had already done so.

At peak, with the county’s weekly mass-vaccination clinics, combined with shots administered in hospitals and pharmacies, doses were getting into thousands of arms a week. Now the number is consistently in the low hundreds.

There are signs that this trend is turning around. In the week ending Friday, the Public Health Department saw about 400 people get a vaccine, up from 200 per week in July, the county said, attributing the increase to an awareness of the dangers posed by the delta variant.

Bennett said that perhaps seeing friends and family contract COVID-19 has helped people realize the seriousness of the virus. “The evidence is pretty clear that even if you contract the virus and you’re vaccinated, you’re likely to get far less sick,” he said.

Among Oregon’s 36 counties, Clatsop ranked ninth in vaccination rates, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

The health authority reported 24 new virus cases for the county on Wednesday and eight new cases on Tuesday. Since the pandemic began, the county had recorded 1,880 virus cases and 13 deaths as of early Wednesday.