Hundreds of people are being tracked down and tested for a rare and aggressive form of tuberculosis after the disease was undetected for weeks in a highly contagious patient in Auckland City Hospital.
Testing of hospital staff and up to 20 patients started yesterday but the hospital confirmed that none of the other patients exposed to the highly unusual strain of tuberculosis had died, the New Zealand Herald reported.
The female patient at the centre of the scare was initially diagnosed as having a respiratory illness. She died several weeks ago after a stay of many weeks in the hospital.
Yesterday Auckland District Health Board confirmed her illness was actually an extremely rare, aggressive and contagious form of TB, which was not diagnosed until tests were done after her death.
Her case was so rare none of the appropriate TB screenings indicated she could have the disease.
That meant that throughout the patient's stay at the hospital she was treated as any other non-contagious patient would be.
Patients with contagious TB should be treated in negative-pressure isolation rooms away from other patients, and staff treating them should be issued with special masks.
DHB chief medical officer David Sage told the Herald yesterday it was possible a handful of those exposed to the patient would have contracted TB.
Those people did not need to panic, he said. They were not at immediate risk of developing symptoms of TB as the disease took a long time to become established, and those around them were not at risk of infection because TB was contagious only when it reached an advanced stage.
