PORT ANGELES — A Clallam County woman who died of measles this spring was exposed to the highly contagious virus at a community clinic in January, state Department of Health spokesman Donn Moyer said Friday.
Moyer said the Peninsula Daily News erroneously reported in a front-page article Friday that the woman, who was not identified, was exposed to measles at Olympic Medical Center.
“It was not at the hospital,” he said.
Moyer said the woman was at OMC about two months after she was exposed and about a week before she died,
The woman was the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. since 2003 and the first in Washington state since 1990.
She was at the community clinic at the same time as a person who later developed a rash and was contagious for measles, Moyer said.
She was later transferred to the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, where she died.
Moyer said North Olympic Peninsula health officials declined to release the name of the medical facility where the woman was before her transfer.
“They opted to not identify that clinic,” he said.
Iva Burks, Clallam County Health Department director, and Dr. Jeanette Stehr-Green, interim Clallam County health officer, did not return calls for comment Friday.
The woman was not discovered to have contracted the virus until after her death.
An autopsy concluded that she died from pneumonia due to measles.
A 14-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl who are siblings and both from Clallam County were diagnosed with the virus in February.
The girl, who attends kindergarten at Olympic Christian School in Port Angeles, caught measles after she was in the Lower Elwha Health Clinic on Jan. 29 about an hour after a 52-year-old man who also caught the disease.
The man was diagnosed with measles Feb. 1.