Anyone who sat in the emergency department waiting room at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas on Monday between 12:33 p.m. and 2:33 p.m. may have been exposed to measles, according to Oregon Health Authority and Clackamas County health officials. The medical center sits at 10180 SE Sunnyside Road, and it now becomes the latest site added to a growing list of potential exposure locations as Oregon works through what has become its worst measles year in recent memory.
The exposure warning was first detailed by The Oregonian/OregonLive, which reported that people who believe they were in that waiting room during the exposure window should check their vaccination records and watch for symptoms. Anyone who suspects they may have measles is being urged to call their care provider before showing up in person, so staff can prepare to isolate them and avoid exposing others.
This is not an isolated incident. Oregon has confirmed 45 measles cases in 2026 as of mid-August, surpassing the state's previous peak of 31 cases in 2024 and marking a sharp jump from just a single case recorded in all of 2025, according to Oregon Health Authority figures reported by The Lund Report. Nationally, the picture is even starker: 2,566 confirmed measles cases have been reported across 47 states and jurisdictions as of mid-August, the country's highest single-year total in more than three decades, as reported by KGW using CDC data — a grim milestone for a disease the U.S. declared eliminated back in 2000.
A Pattern Emerging in Clackamas County
Monday's alert is far from the first at a Clackamas County healthcare facility this year. An earlier exposure was flagged at Kaiser Permanente Mt. Scott Medical Office on August 6, and before that, Kaiser Sunnyside's own ER waiting room was the site of an exposure alert on January 26, according to records from the Oregon Medical Association. Hoodline previously reported on the Mt. Scott exposure tied to that earlier Sunnyside case.
Other exposure sites have also popped up across the Portland metro area throughout the year, including locations in north Portland, Gresham, Beaverton and southwest Portland, and possible exposures have also been reported in Clark County, Washington, per the seed reporting from The Oregonian/OregonLive. Clackamas County alone has now logged multiple healthcare-facility alerts in 2026, spanning outpatient clinics, urgent care and emergency rooms.
Why Exposure Risk Keeps Climbing
Public health officials point to declining childhood immunization rates as a central driver of the state's surge. Oregon's rate of nonmedical exemptions for required school vaccines among kindergartners hit a record 10.9% for the 2025–2026 school year, leaving only 85.6% of kindergartners fully up to date, according to an Oregon Health Authority press release. The second dose of the MMR vaccine saw the steepest climb, with a 9.4% nonmedical exemption rate this year — a 92% increase over the past decade, the agency reported.
That erosion in coverage has consequences at the community level. More than one-third of Oregon K-12 schools with at least 10 enrolled students fail to reach the 93% to 95% MMR vaccination threshold needed to sustain herd immunity, according to state health data reported by Keizertimes. When vaccination coverage falls below those thresholds, a highly airborne virus like measles can move quickly through waiting rooms, classrooms and other shared public spaces.
Strained Public Health Response
The volume of cases has also changed how the state responds. Following the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds and a sustained influx of measles cases, the Oregon Health Authority updated its investigation rules in 2026 to ease active contact-tracing and source-identification demands on local health departments, the same Lund Report account noted. In place of exhaustive case-by-case tracing, the state has leaned more heavily on tools like the wastewater monitoring dashboard it launched with Oregon State University, which had detected measles viral traces across nine counties by early 2026 — evidence of broader community transmission than clinical testing alone was catching, as Hoodline reported in its coverage of the sewer surveillance program.
What Exposed Patients Should Know
Measles is a highly contagious, potentially serious viral illness that spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes, and infectious viral particles can linger in an enclosed room for up to two hours after that person has left, according to an Oregon Health Authority public alert. Infected people can transmit the virus starting four days before their rash appears through four days after, and they can be contagious before they ever show symptoms — meaning waiting-room visitors can be exposed without ever directly interacting with the source patient.
Symptoms typically begin seven to 21 days after exposure, often starting with fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes, before a rash appears on the face and spreads to the rest of the body. The illness can lead to ear infections, lung infections, diarrhea and, in more severe cases, brain swelling, and it can be fatal. It is considered particularly dangerous for children younger than 5, pregnant people and those with weakened immune systems.
Unvaccinated individuals who were exposed can still receive an MMR vaccine within 72 hours to prevent or reduce the severity of illness, or immune globulin within six days for high-risk contacts, according to CDC post-exposure guidance. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles altogether. Anyone who thinks they may have measles should call their care provider first and let staff know before arriving, so the facility can take precautions to avoid exposing other patients.
