TB risk for bus passengers

TORONTO—There’s a “moderate” risk that a person with tuberculosis may have infected other passengers on a Greyhound bus that departed from Toronto en route to Detroit on Aug. 31, public health officials said yesterday in urging that 27 people who disembarked in Windsor, Ont. seek testing.
The infected person—only identified as a woman carrying a Canadian passport and ranging in age from 20-45—previously had tested positive for tuberculosis in the United States and was refused entry back into U.S. at the Detroit border, said Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams.

The woman doesn’t have the more serious forms of multi-drug resistant or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, and it’s “not a panic situation,” but officials still want to ensure all the passengers are accounted for and tested.
“We’re looking at moderate to low-risk, and perhaps a minimal risk because we understand the person wasn’t terribly symptomatic, wasn’t hacking and coughing all the time,” Williams said.
“The risk to the public is not a high one, but we need to go the extra mile and make sure to contact those people the best we can.”
The 27 passengers who disembarked in Windsor are being urged to get tested for tuberculosis.
Williams said it’s not urgent the passengers see a doctor immediately because it usually takes at least six weeks before testing can be done effectively for tuberculosis.
The remaining 15 passengers who still were on the bus are being looked after by public health officials in the U.S. and Ontario, but it’s still too early too know if they were infected.
The infected passenger is being treated in quarantine.