All 26 Americans Who Sat Nearest TB Patient Found

[Demeter]

Source: Washington Post


All 26 Americans Who Sat Nearest TB Patient Found
Officials Will Monitor Airline Passengers Potentially Exposed to 'Extensively Drug-Resistant' Strain

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 2, 2007; A03



Public health authorities have found all 26 Americans who sat near a man infected with untreated "extensively drug-resistant" tuberculosis on a transatlantic flight last month and will be able to test them for exposure to the often-fatal organism, federal officials said yesterday.

The man's good health and the small amount of TB bacteria in his lungs make it unlikely that he infected anyone on the round-trip flights to Europe, which he took against medical advice. However, it will take at least two months to rule that out -- or to discover that he did infect someone.

In the interim, the exposed people who are under surveillance should not think that they -- unlike the TB-infected traveler -- can infect anyone, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Julie L. Gerberding, said yesterday...There were 435 passengers on an Atlanta-to-Paris flight that the infected man and his fiancee took on May 12. (The couple were going to Europe to be married on a Greek island and then honeymoon in Italy.) Of that total, 310 were U.S. citizens or residents.

Health authorities, however, are most interested in people sitting in the man's row and in two rows in front of and behind him -- a zone where studies have shown passengers are at greatest risk in such situations. There were 26 Americans in that zone. On the return trip, a Prague-to-Montreal flight on May 24, the couple were the only Americans in the potential exposure zone.

How many countries had citizens among the approximately 50 people in the exposure zone on the outgoing flight, and the 30 exposed on the return flight, is unknown. Gerberding said she did not know how many of those people have been found, although she said that Canada had located all 28 of its citizens who sat in the zone...The exposed passengers will undergo skin testing for TB now, and again in eight to 10 weeks.
....Exactly how people in that situation would be treated was not available yesterday.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060100528_pf.html

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Just HOW did this pillar of the community get infected, hmmm?