Tacoma woman evaded TB treatment for more than a year. Deputies say they’ve detained her

Pierce County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday announced that a Tacoma woman sought for evading tuberculosis treatment has been detained.

In a news release, Sgt. Darren Moss Jr. wrote, “Today Pierce County Deputies located and detained the woman Pierce County Superior Court mandated to comply with Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department orders to isolate and treat her tuberculosis disease.”

He added that the woman “was booked into a negative pressure room in the Pierce County Jail where she will get treatment as ordered by a Pierce County Superior Court Judge.”

In a statement on its blog published Thursday, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department stated that the woman “will be housed in a room specially equipped for isolation, testing and treatment. We are hopeful she will choose to get the life-saving treatment she needs to treat her tuberculosis.”

The case dates back to mid-January 2022 when the health department first sought an order for involuntary detention for quarantine or isolation of a Tacoma woman, listed in court documents as V.N., as she was not following through with prescribed multi-month treatment for tuberculosis.

The prolonged court case came to light after The News Tribune discovered the court filings following the health department’s initial announcement of an active TB case in the area.

Later filings in the case indicated the woman was not cooperating with a court-appointed monitor attempting to meet with her, or law enforcement assigned to execute a warrant for detention and isolation issued in early March.

On May 19, health officials were again in court to gain another order for mandatory testing and treatment. The woman earlier in the year had been tracked by law enforcement, according to court records, and was seen boarding a city bus and arriving at a local casino.

Nearly 20 court orders had been issued in the case before Thursday’s detention.

In a news conference Thursday attended by Moss and Nigel Turner, division director of Communicable Disease Control for TPCHD, it was explained the woman’s identity would remain private per the sealed nature of the court case involving medical care.

“Obviously, we have basically medical information that should should remain private,” Turner said. “We also might want to make sure that in the future, if such such situations are happening, people feel comfortable working with public health and we can do that type of investigation.”

“Her private care information is so private that in the jail, you will not find her on our booking roster,” Moss said. “If you do, it’s just initials ... If the courts would allow that stuff to be released, then we could talk about it.”

“Obviously, if we were able to release her photo and her name, maybe we would have been able to have somebody call in sooner. But that wasn’t the case in this,” Moss noted.

Moss said that the woman was apprehended at her residence with no resistance, “detained and put into a vehicle that had a separate cabin where the the air would not affect the two corrections deputies that were driving in the front seats,” he said.

It is yet unclear how long she’ll be detained. The court order calls for up to 45 days, which Turner said could be longer or shorter.

“She could potentially be released before then if the treatment is effective, she agrees to treatment, and she tests negative,” Turner said. “We can also petition the judge for a longer stay, if that’s not been achieved by that time. Tuberculosis is a difficult disease to treat. And we really need to follow the particular circumstances of this patient’s needs.”

Turner said the cost of the detention “will be covered by the Health Department using public funds.”

He noted, “It’s really hard to say how much this will cost. Every case is different. And we don’t know necessarily the length of this going forward. But we want this to be resolved as quickly as we possibly can.”

Turner would not divulge numbers of close contacts with the woman who were being tracked.

“This is our ongoing work to assess risk to the public and then follow up. We follow up with those of the closest contacts first and then work out from there,” Turner said.

As for any change in TB monitoring protocols given the prolonged fight in this case, Turner noted that it is rare for someone to not comply with treatment, with jail “the ultimate kind of outcome that we want to avoid.“

“However, it remains something that we need to do when when the public’s health is at risk,” he added. “I think it’s something where we always look to try find alternatives that will help us avoid this, but in this case, it wasn’t possible.”