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Thurston County health officer warns of measles spread, explains ARI threshold; proposes testing and outreach

Thurston County Board of Health · March 10, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Health officer Dr. Villona reported low COVID but warned that the respiratory season remains active, outlined an acute respiratory illness (ARI) transmission alert threshold used regionally to guide masking in clinical areas, and flagged rising measles cases (about 1,300 nationally, 26 in Washington). She also noted uncertainty about local syphilis testing rates and proposed education and testing campaigns.

Thurston County’s health officer, Dr. Villona, briefed the Board of Health on March 10 about current respiratory illnesses and public-health priorities, including regional alert metrics, measles trends and gaps in sexually transmitted infection testing.

Villona said COVID-19 levels in the county remain low and influenza may be plateauing, but RSV visits are up and acute respiratory illness (ARI) activity remains above the regional threshold used to trigger heightened clinical precautions. She described the ARI threshold — a cooperative metric among Northwest Healthcare…

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