HYRUM, Utah — The Bear River Health Department is alerting parents and residents after a Hyrum high school student tested positive for tuberculosis.
According to the department, the unidentified teen is a student at Mountain Crest High School and that only a "smaller group of individuals are likely to have had close and prolonged contact and be at risk."
Health officials are urging for proactive testing to help prevent the spread of the disease.
“It is a big public health issue,” said Dr. Prafulla Martin-Garg with the health department. “We are not sure where the student contracted it from. We were given the information that the student had TB and hence, we then started to do contact tracing starting with the family.”
While tuberculosis is an infectious disease spread through close contact, it cannot be spread by shaking someone’s hand, sharing food or drink, touching bed linens or toilet seats, sharing toothbrushes, or kissing. The disease only develops in approximately 5-10% in an exposed individual, but testing is highly recommended, the department said.
The high school and Cache County School District are working to determine which students or school staff had close or prolonged contact with the individual, and complimentary testing was made available on Monday and Tuesday.
“There are many factors you could have, students in vicinity, in the close vicinity to the index case that may never get TB, but there could be students who have spent much less than nine hours, and still could have contracted it," said Dr. Martin-Garg. "So it’s very variable, which is why we have to kind of cast a wide net.”
Students and staff with weakened immune systems are being encouraged to test for tuberculosis.
Symptoms of the disease include prolonged cough, fevers, chills, night sweats, weight loss, loss of appetite and chest pain. With the wide-ranging symptoms, Martin-Garg said tuberculosis can be tricky to detect.
“If you compare it with COVID, [symptoms] are slower in onset. This is a fastidious organism. Symptoms can range from months, sometimes years."
