The investigation that found 32 workers at a Chantilly post office tested positive for tuberculosis exposure began more than two months ago when authorities learned that a mail carrier had contagious TB, a Fairfax County public health official said yesterday.
Dr. Ronald Karpick, a physician consultant for the Fairfax County Department of Health, said the mail carrier has been treated, is no longer contagious and has returned to work. He also said people on the carrier’s route were not at risk.
County health officials learned in January that the employee had active TB. Skin tests were performed on 120 employees, and 32 showed positive results. Follow-up X-rays showed no active contagious form of the disease, Dr. Karpick said. The 32 employees, at the post office at 4410 Brookfield Corporate Drive, are being offered medication.
Dr. James Lamberti, a pulmonologist and tuberculosis specialist in Annandale, said: “It’s not like it lives on the mail.” He said a person working outside is the “best case” and that closed environments are the “most problematic.”
The employee also spent about four hours a day sorting mail inside the post office, in what Dr. Karpick described as a large, well-ventilated room. He said it was not clear whether co-workers who tested positive to latent, noncontagious TB became infected at work or elsewhere.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that can be spread through the air when a person with an active case coughs or sneezes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease is most likely to spread to people such as co-workers with whom active carriers spend time every day.
People who test positive for exposure but not active tuberculosis cannot infect others, though latent cases can become active.
Douglas Sapp of the Northern Virginia area local of the American Postal Workers Union said workers underwent follow-up testing yesterday.
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