Norovirus found at hospital

A confirmed outbreak of norovirus virtually has quarantined Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, where 40 patients and staff have fallen sick this week.

Hospital officials have halted admissions, discharges and visits from everyone, including outside mental health workers, in hopes of containing the highly contagious illness. Twenty-one of the hospital’s 300 patients and 19 of the 750 staff members have come down with the gastrointestinal illness, said Hal Wilson, the hospital’s chief executive officer.

“It’s a small number, but I don’t want it to get any bigger,” Wilson said.

The outbreak could threaten services for people who need psychiatric care, said Jan Dobbs, director of crisis response services for Spokane Mental Health.

So far, however, clients have been cared for at Sacred Heart Medical Center, she said.

“The access is probably going to get more limited as this goes on,” Dobbs said.

This incident marks the first time that Spokane Mental Health staff members have been prevented from visiting their clients at Eastern, Dobbs said. Typically, between 50 and 80 people in Eastern Washington require mental health hospitalization each month, she said.

The outbreak, the hospital’s first, comes less than a month after norovirus swept through the adult psychiatric ward at Sacred Heart. Nearly 40 staff members and patients were sickened in that incident, officials said.

Patients are transferred between the two institutions, although Wilson said it’s not clear that the Eastern outbreak was sparked by an infected patient from Sacred Heart.

“We may have picked it up there somehow,” he said.

Sacred Heart’s psychiatric ward has been free of illness since the outbreak in mid-July, a spokesman said Friday.

Three cases of norovirus at Eastern State Hospital have been confirmed by state laboratory tests, said Mark Springer, epidemiologist with the Spokane Regional Health District. Remaining cases are only presumptive.

The outbreak began on Sunday; nine people remained sick on Friday, Wilson said. He expected the illness to run its course by next week.

Reach reporter JoNel Aleccia at (509) 459-5460 or by e-mail at jonela@spokesman.com