WILKESBORO —
Nearly 300 inmates and staff members at Wilkes Correctional Center have been tested for tuberculosis after the disease was confirmed in two inmates there.
The first case was diagnosed in early November, and testing and notifications began immediately, Wilkes County health officials said. The two inmates are being treated at Central Prison in Raleigh, and no additional cases have been confirmed.
Those tested include 238 inmates, 56 staff members and a small number of outside contacts.
There are typically one or two cases of TB in Wilkes County in any given year, said Beth Lovette, the county’s health director. She said the agency decided to notify the general public about this situation because of questions and misinformation spreading in the community.
“We’re trying to make the general public realize they don’t need to worry about it,” Lovette said.
TB usually affects the lungs, and the bacteria is spread through the air when someone with active TB coughs, sneezes or speaks, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Symptoms include a cough that lasts three weeks or longer, pain in the chest, and coughing up blood or sputum.
TB cases have been diagnosed on occasion in prisons across the state, but there have been no cases in recent memory in the Wilkes Correctional Center, which has been open since the 1930s, said Keith Acree, spokesman for the N.C. Department of Correction.
Wilkes Correctional Center is a minimum-security state prison in North Wilkesboro. (It is not the county jail.) Inmates live in dormitory-style housing and many are eligible for work-release programs. There were 220 inmates there on Tuesday.
Both health department and state prison officials said they could not identify the two inmates who were sick, but said officials are working to notify anyone with whom the two may have had sustained exposure.
Health officials said they believe the potential for exposure is limited and no one is at immediate risk.
“Tuberculosis infection may not be detected by a skin test until up to two months after exposure, so our standard procedure is to repeat skin tests in eight weeks on all employees and inmates to determine if those persons may have been infected,” Dr. Jason Stout, medical director of the N.C. Tuberculosis Control Program at the N.C. Division of Public Health, said in a statement. “Most infected persons are not sick and not contagious, and can take medicine to prevent getting sick in the future.”
In North Carolina, TB is more common along the eastern coastal plain and in larger urban areas such as Raleigh and Charlotte, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. The disease is least common in the western and northern mountain counties. There was one TB case in Wilkes County in 2009, and two cases in 2008.