California Agency Issues ‘Health Advisory’ on Tuberculosis

A doctor examines the x-rays of a tuberculosis patient in a file image. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Officials in California recently issued a “health advisory” after a “substantial increase” in the number of cases of the deadly bacterial infection.

The state reported around 2,100 cases of active tuberculosis, or TB, last year, or a 15 percent jump from the previous year, officials said in a recent report. Many of the cases involved are people with latent infections that later became active, which allowed them to develop symptoms and spread it to other people, according to the California Department of Public Health.

As a result, the agency in late March sent out a “health advisory“ to health care providers across the state to be aware of the increase in cases, adding they should consider tuberculosis in the ”differential diagnosis of community acquired pneumonia or other respiratory illnesses, particularly among patients with a risk factor for TB or with prolonged symptoms.”

They are being advised to test and treat for a latent infection “among patients at risk for TB to prevent progression to active TB disease,” the agency said. Meanwhile, local officials and providers should report suspected and confirmed cases to their local health departments, it added.

Those at major risk for tuberculosis include those who lived outside of the country where tuberculosis rates are relatively high such as many nations in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, according to the state health department. They also include people with compromised immune systems, being in close contact with a person with active tuberculosis, were or are homeless, or lived in a setting such as a prison or a jail.

In 2019, California also reported 2,100 cases of active tuberculosis, while similar figures were reported in 2018 and 2017. Data has shown that the state had a peak number of cases of more than 5,000 in the early 1990s.

“What we want providers to know is that when any individual comes to them presenting with respiratory symptoms, they need to start thinking about is: Is this potentially a person who is at risk of having TB?” Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County’s health officer, told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview.

Symptoms

Tuberculosis, which historians say may be the most deadly disease in human history, causes a range of symptoms.

The usual symptoms of active tuberculosis are a chronic cough with blood-containing phlegm, fever, chills, malaise, night sweats, appetite loss, fatigue, swellings that don’t go away, and weight loss. Tuberculosis can also spread outside the lungs to other parts of the body, which may present different symptoms.

People with latent tuberculosis cases, which can progress to become active after months or years, don’t show any symptoms.

Tuberculosis has been known since ancient times and was documented by Greek and Roman writers and physicians.

Chicago Cases

Officials in Chicago this week confirmed several cases at a shelter holding illegal immigrants, saying they are “aware of a small number of cases of tuberculosis among new arrivals in a few different shelters over the course of the response.”

The Chicago Department of Public Health added to local media that it “continues to take cases very seriously in order to keep it contained.”

A spokesman for the department, Jacob Martin, told Newsweek that reports of an outbreak are not correct.

“There is no TB outbreak, as an outbreak would require evidence of recent transmission,” he said. “Most cases of active TB disease in Chicago and the U.S. occur in people who acquired infection years ago in their home country and then have re-activation of the bacteria later in life.”

He added that health programs will “perform contact tracing around infectious cases to prevent spread of the infection to others.”

But a local Chicago official said that he is concerned that city officials have not correctly responded, warning of a potential outbreak of both tuberculosis and measles, a viral infection.

“This is a crisis we could have avoided, just like with the measles, if we had simply instituted the American standard of vaccines upon all those migrants being shipped to the city of Chicago,” Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez, a Democrat, told Fox News on Friday morning, referring to the tuberculosis cases.

Last month, officials in Chicago also confirmed a number of measles cases at the city’s shelters, drawing the attention of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which sent a team to the city to respond.

Mr. Lopez added that he brought up the tuberculosis and measles issues at the shelters to local Chicago government officials. They told him that he was being xenophobic and being against immigration, he alleged in the Fox interview.

“They can gaslight all they want, but at a certain point, the truth is going to come out and we’re seeing it come out slowly and steadily now,” he said.

A report released last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that thousands of illegal immigrants under the age of 18 who were diagnosed with latent tuberculosis were released across the United States between June 2022 and late May 2023.