Clark County could be nearing end to measles outbreak

Southwest Washington hasn’t had a case of the measles in almost three weeks, and if that continues, Clark County hopes to declare an official end to the outbreak later this month.

RELATED: Measles case in King County came in contact with hundreds
RELATED: Washington measles outbreak prevalent in unvaccinated kids

The county will need to get to April 28 without another confirmed measles case in order to officially declare the outbreak to be over. It announced Monday that it had been a full incubation period (21 days) without any new cases.

The outbreak has affected 73 people, most of whom are unvaccinated children. Over the last three months, it spread to King County and northern Oregon.

According to Clark County Public Health Officer Dr. Alan Melnick, officials have spent thousands of hours to clamp down on the spread of the virus.

“Overall we’ve excluded almost 800 kids from schools, and hundreds of people on active monitoring, contacting them every day and asking them to stay home,” Melnick told KIRO Radio.

The state and county together have spent $1.6 million dollars during that period on tests, procedures, and more.

“Every single case, you have to identify, you have to test, you have to isolate that person, [and] you have to do the interview of where were they at in the public — it’s very labor-intensive,” state epidemiologist Scott Lindquist told KIRO Radio back in February.

Lindquist points to the outbreak as something that could have been easily avoided with higher vaccination rates. Clark County’s immunization rate for school-aged children is 78 percent, well under the national rate of 91 percent.

“This is taxpayer dollars that’s paying for an outbreak which would have been 100 percent preventable,” he noted.

A bill to remove personal exemptions for the measles vaccine was recently proposed in the state Legislature.