Out-of-state traveler exposes Holiday Inn guests to measles in Asheville

31 August 2026 · Source balance: Centre

Health officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina issued a public health alert on Sunday after confirming that someone from another state traveled through Asheville while infectious with measles. Anyone present at the Holiday Inn Express on Smokey Park Highway between one and ten thirty a.m. on August twenty-sixth may have been exposed. Exposed individuals should monitor for symptoms until September sixteenth. The virus spreads through the air when people cough or sneeze and can survive in the air for up to two hours. Symptoms typically appear seven to twenty-one days after exposure and include a distinctive rash and white spots inside the mouth. The hotel is cooperating fully with health authorities to contact guests and staff. This exposure comes as the United States faces its highest measles case count since the early nineteen nineties, with nearly twenty-nine hundred confirmed cases reported as of late August twenty twenty-six.