Author: The Seattle Times / Source: oregonlive.com
OLYMPIA — The cost of Washington’s measles outbreak has surpassed $1 million as more than 200 health-department staffers from the state and Clark County focus their efforts on the disease.
As of Saturday, there were 65 confirmed cases of measles in Clark County, 47 of which were in children age 10 and younger, according to the county’s Public Health department, which is also investigating one suspected case. There is also a single case reported in King County, bringing the statewide total to 66, according to the state Department of Health (DOH). Additionally, there have been four cases in Oregon.
DOH has spent approximately $614,000 on staff and supplies as of Tuesday, in addition to about $115,000 in other non-budgeted expenditures, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist, who expects the total response to eventually cost the state “well over a million dollars.”
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Meanwhile, Clark County Public Health has spent about $500,000 responding to the measles outbreak, bringing the statewide total over $1 million, says Dr. Alan Melnick, the county’s public health director.
“This is taxpayer money for something that could have been completely, utterly preventable in the first place,” he told the Seattle Times.
Out of approximately 1,900 total staffers, 166 state Department of Health staff members, working approximately 8,700 hours, have been assigned to the measles outbreak so far, according to Lindquist. Some are communicable disease epidemiologists, normally focusing on issues such as hepatitis and day-to-day food-borne illness outbreaks — duties that have largely been put on the back burner.
“It’s going to slow down everything else,” Lindquist said, noting that usual work is picked up by the remaining staff or is put aside. “The current public health infrastructure is really threatened by events like this.”
Each Department of Health staffer spends about two…
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