SPRING VALLEY, Calif.—San Diego County’s Tuberculosis Control Program is working with Grossmont Union High School District to notify students, staff and volunteers potentially exposed to tuberculosis (TB) during the second semester of the 2023-24 school year at Mount Miguel High School.
The school, at 8585 Blossom Lane in Spring Valley, had a potential risk for TB from Feb. 1 to June 4, 2024.
The county and Grossmont Union High School District will be coordinating TB testing, and x-rays when appropriate, for people who health investigators have identified as having been exposed.
TB is an airborne disease that is transmitted from person-to-person through inhalation of the bacteria from the air. The bacteria are spread when someone sick with TB coughs, speaks, sings, or breathes. People with frequent and prolonged indoor exposure to a person who is sick with TB should get tested.
“Symptoms of active TB include persistent cough, fever, night sweats and unexplained weight loss,” Dr. Wilma Wooten, county public health officer, said in a statement. “Most people who become infected after exposure to tuberculosis do not get sick right away. This is called latent TB infection. Some who become infected with tuberculosis will become ill in the future, sometimes even years later if their latent TB infection is not treated. Blood tests and skin tests are effective in determining whether someone has been infected.”
Taking medicines for latent TB infection can cure the infection and keep these people from ever getting active TB disease.
According to the health agency, there were 192 TB cases in the county in 2020 and 201 people reported with active disease in 2021. In 2022, 208 people were reported with active TB disease in San Diego County.
An estimated 175,000 people in San Diego County have a latent TB infection and are at risk for developing active TB without preventive treatment, health officials said. People who test positive for TB, but who do not have symptoms of active TB, should get a chest X-ray and talk to a medical provider, as they may likely have a latent TB infection.
Anyone who would like more information on this potential exposure should call the county TB Control Program at 619-692-5565.