FORKS — Hundreds of hours and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars will go into this year’s fight against a measles outbreak authorities say was entirely preventable.
Three adults and two juveniles in Clallam County have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease since Feb. 1.
The Clallam County Board of Health heard a report Tuesday on the measles update at its monthly meeting, held in Forks this month.
All but the fifth case were in unvaccinated people.
The last adult developed measles despite having been vaccinated. The vaccine was of a type administered between 1957 and 1971 that is less effective than the one in use now, health officials said.
The tab won’t be totaled for weeks, but a single case of measles in Kitsap County last year cost public and private health agencies $150,000, according to Iva Burks, Clallam County Health and Human Services director.
Clallam health commissioners last month declared a public health emergency, opening an emergency county fund to help pay for the effort.
Health personnel contacted more than 200 people in tracing the travels of just the first two measles carriers to determine who else might catch the disease, Burks said.
Ensuring the patients kept their quarantines meant daily checks on each person. That diverted employees from other duties and stacked up overtime, she added.
As for vaccine, each dose costs $60, and associated fees bring the total to $110 per shot.
As of March 13, the county and its health care partners had given 561 vaccinations, Burks said.
Some of those doses came free from the state children’s vaccination program, and others came for no charge from the state Department of Health, but Clallam County has had to buy an unknown number of doses, she said.
Costs will mount at least until April 19, “our out-of-the-woods date” when the infectious period of the latest case expires, she said.
Burks said her department administered 1,109 immunizations of all kinds in 2014, so this year’s measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) shots alone have totaled nearly half last year’s amount in only three months.
Burks was certain the county faces another outbreak of measles or another disease among people who have not been vaccinated.
“This will happen again because we don’t have the percentage [of immunized people] to protect the entire community,” she said.
Immunity rates above 90 percent are considered safeguards against outbreaks, she said.
As few as 56 percent of schoolchildren in Port Townsend schools and 89 percent of children in Port Angeles schools have complete immunity against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), hepatitis B and varicella (chicken pox), according to the Department of Health.
In Washington, parents and guardians can invoke philosophical objections to their children being vaccinated before attending school.
A bill to close that exemption — by far more popular than religious or medical reasons — failed to make it to the floor of the state House of Representatives.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
