A University of California-Berkeley student was diagnosed with tuberculosis and university and city health officials spent the weekend tracking down 225 UC-Berkeley students and faculty who had been in close contact with the student.
The student, who was not named, was recently diagnosed at the University Health Services center and was immediately isolated from the campus population by university health officials, according to City of Berkeley spokeswoman Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. The student will stay in isolation until the tuberculosis is no longer infectious, she said.
"We have notified UC-Berkeley students and faculty who may have had close contact with the case," said Dr. Janet Berreman, City of Berkeley Health Officer, in a statement. "I take seriously our responsibility to control TB in our community."
People who were in close contact with the infected person are being given information about how they should be screened for the disease. But health officials stressed that tuberculosis cannot be passed through brief or casual contact.
To become infected, another person must directly inhale TB germs -- transmitted by the coughs and sneezes of the sick person -- over an extended length of time, Clunies-Ross said.
Tuberculosis is a slow-growing bacterial infection that attacks the lungs and generally requires extensive antibiotic treatment.
The San Francisco Bay Area has long had higher rates of tuberculosis compared with other parts of California and the nation, in part because this region has a high level of immigration from Asia, where TB is endemic.
The Bay Area's TB rate has been dropping over the past decade. Last month, public-health officials said that the number of cases dropped in 2008 compared with 2007 for every Bay Area county except Contra Costa.
But public-health officials worry that the deepening recession could lead to a more widespread increase, as funds for prevention are cut and as financially strapped families double up in more crowded housing.
(E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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