Over 20,000 kits to be distributed by Public Health for local COVID-19 testing needs

April 9, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

Update 4.19.20: On April 17, 2020, Public Health – Seattle & King County was alerted by UW Medicine to discontinue use of the 20,000 COVID-19 specimen collection kits donated to Public Health, due to a quality control issue with the viral transport media that preserves the specimen. The kits were recalled from all local partners […]

New modeling reports suggest positive impact of social distancing measures on COVID-19 epidemic, but more progress needed

March 30, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

Reductions in person-to-person contact through a variety of social distancing measures appear to be making a difference in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in King County, but those measures need to continue to succeed in decreasing and delaying the outbreak peak, according to two new reports by the Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM). Working […]

Introducing SCAN: the greater Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network

March 23, 2020.Reading time 15 minutes.

Washington state reported its first case of COVID-19 on January 21st. Since then, government officials and public health experts have been asking: How many more cases are there? And where will the virus show up next? These are important questions. Understanding how common COVID-19 is and how it is spreading are critical to informing our […]

TB evaluation at Microsoft

February 27, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

A vendor at a Microsoft facility in Redmond was recently diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) disease. This person had contact with nearly 150 other vendor employees who require testing as a precaution to rule out TB infection. TB is not easy to spread TB is an infectious disease caused by bacteria that are passed from person to person […]

Statement on Bothell High School closure

February 26, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

Updated 2/29/20: According to Snohomish County, any associated testing for COVID-19 related to this situation has come back negative. We understand that the Northshore School District is choosing to close Bothell High School on February 27, 2020 to clean the building because they are concerned about novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Closing schools when there has not […]

The 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak and pandemic preparedness

January 31, 2020.Reading time 9 minutes.

Updated on 2/27/20: This blog post was originally posted on 1/31/20. Out of date information has been deleted from this blog. As the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak continues to expand in China, and the World Health Organization has now declared a global public health emergency, it raises questions about what it means for the United […]