A Tacoma woman who was arrested for refusing treatment for active tuberculosis was released from jail Friday, according to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
She had been refusing treatment for over a year, according to the Health Department's petition for detention.
Pierce County Judge Philip Sorenson issued a ruling Friday releasing the woman from the Pierce County Jail with conditions, including isolating at home under court supervision. The Health Department will continue providing the woman's testing and treatment.
The Health Department had asked the court to keep the woman in jail for another 45 days, or require she isolate in her residence, determining voluntary isolation and treatment would be "inadequate to provide the measure of public protection necessary."
Sorenson found the woman in civil contempt in February for refusing to comply with a court order to take medication or isolate. She was arrested and taken into custody June 1. She has been housed in a room "specially equipped for isolation, testing and treatment" at the Pierce County Jail.
The case is only the third time in the past 20 years the department has asked for a court order to detain someone refusing treatment for tuberculosis.
Pierce County has about 20 cases of active tuberculosis, an infectious disease that affects the lungs, each year. State law requires health care providers to notify the Health Department of any active cases.
Most infections are latent or dormant (about 100,000 people in King County have latent TB infections), meaning a person has no symptoms and cannot spread the disease.
Active tuberculosis is much harder to spread than the cold or flu. It typically takes repeated, prolonged exposures in a confined space for an infection to occur.
The number of people infected with tuberculosis rose globally in 2021 for the first time in years, the World Health Organization said in October.
