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Postal worker treated for TB
More than 120 employees at the Chantilly post office have been tested for tuberculosis after one of them was diagnosed with the disease.A foreign-born mail carrier for the post office was diagnosed with the disease on Jan. 11 at a Fairfax County Health Department clinic, according to Mike Andrews, a spokesman for the department.
Following protocol, the health department contacted supervisors at the post office and began testing other employees. Andrews said 32 people tested positive, but none of them have manifested active signs of the disease.
Tuberculosis is a disease that attacks the lungs and can be passed between people who are in close contact.
About 22 of the employees who were tested had been exposed to tuberculosis at another point in their life, according to health officials, so not all necessarily contracted the disease from the postal worker.
Andrews said the health department didn't think it was necessary to contact the public about the outbreak because it requires contact over “prolonged exposure” to be contagious.
Foreign-born individuals are normally more likely to have been exposed to the disease, Andrews said.
Of the 108 people diagnosed with tuberculosis in Fairfax County in 2007, only eight were born in the United States, he said.
The health department is now finished with its investigation of the outbreak, and the mail carrier has been treated and has returned to work.
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