Public Health Officials Conduct Tuberculosis Investigation at North View Middle School

A recent case of tuberculosis (TB) at North View Middle School in Brooklyn Park has Hennepin County Public Health officials working to reassure people that the situation is being managed through routine procedures.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that most commonly affects the lungs. Hennepin County Public Health officials say they investigate around 40 cases of active pulmonary tuberculosis a year. However, unlike COVID-19 or influenza, it’s harder to transmit.  

“You really have to have that close, face-to-face prolonged exposure over a long period of time,” said Erica Bagstad, epidemiology supervisor at Hennepin County Public Health. “If someone has active TB when they’re speaking, coughing or singing, they’re expelling that bacteria out and other people can breathe it in and get infected.”

The Hennepin County Public Health team learned about an active pulmonary TB case in mid-May at North View Middle School and launched an in-depth investigation to identify potential close contacts. They’re not allowed to share specific information about the case due to patient privacy laws.

“North View Middle School was an excellent partner when we did identify that the case had been at school,” said Bagstad. “We really worked closely with them to look at how people are moving in the building, and class schedules, and see how much overlap, and then really determining who had that really long, prolonged, close exposure to the case.”

Officials say approximately 80 students and staff were exposed. Those people received notification letters, while the rest of the school received letters indicating they had not been exposed.

For those identified as contacts, Bagstad noted, “Our public health team does do an individual phone call to kind of walk them through what the exposure means. We do some screening over the phone, and then we talk to them about next steps about getting tested for tuberculosis.”

Active tuberculosis disease most often affects the lungs, but can involve any part of the body.

Testing and Treatment

Officials emphasized that the current priority is to ensure each of the 80 people exposed to TB at North View undergo testing, which happens through a blood test.

When someone is infected with TB, you first have what’s called “latent tuberculosis,” which means that the germ is sleeping.

“It’s not making you sick, you’re not able to transmit it to anyone else,” said Bagstad of latent TB. “So, we want to catch people in testing when they’re still having latent tuberculosis. We treat them with a course of antibiotics.”

For testing, people can go to their primary care physician, or if they don’t have insurance, they can get a referral to the tuberculosis control program at the Public Health Clinic in downtown Minneapolis.

“We would see them here, do a blood test, they get the results within 24 to 48 hours, and then we kind of go from there depending on the result,” said Erin Mehta, a clinic manager at the Public Health Clinic.

If they see anything through testing that they deem to be out of the ordinary, public health officials will do what’s called a “second ring” where they expand and test more people.

“But we’re hoping we just get those first 80 or so people screened,” said Bagstad. “That’s kind of our initial priority with this investigation.”

Brooklyn Park