Colleen Mallory is worried about her elderly mother.

Her roommate was very sick.

They were isolated to her room, um, not allowed to go out in the hall or to the dining room or anywhere while I found out today that a roommate has been taken out of there.

So I'm assuming she has a virus.

All those who died were admitted to the Evergreen Health Center, which is isolating new patients and taking extra measures to protect frontline workers.

We expect the number of cases will continue to increase in the coming days and weeks, and we're taking this situation extremely seriously.

Also, there's growing concern over a person to person spread in the community.

Unfortunately, we are now starting to find more covert 19 cases in Washington that appear to be acquired locally here in Washington.

Um, and we now know that the virus is actively spreading in some communities here in Washington, on the streets.

Some are on edge when we're a Costco yesterday and they didn't have any rice in the flower.

This man is in the high risk category over 60 with a compromised immune system.

We don't go to events.

We were gonna go to a movie theater the other day.

We cancel that.

You have no control about who's around you and, um, or the surfaces.

Cleanliness, disinfecting.

That's a really big deal.

Others are stockpiling supplies.

I just saw the news this morning.

More people with the virus with not enough spare hospital beds, the state's governor announced.

They're buying an entire motel to house people facing quarantine.

We have moved to a new stage in the fight to contain, mitigate and manage this outbreak.

For officials, the balancing act here is to get people to take this seriously enough that they take precautions, but not so much that they panic.

Greg Rasmussen, CBC News, Kirkland, Washington.