School Tuberculosis Scare a False Alarm

THOUSAND OAKS —  Fear of a tuberculosis outbreak in two Thousand Oaks middle schools was put to rest Monday after county health officials determined that a classroom worker never had the highly contagious disease.

The scare led to 60 schoolchildren at Colina Middle School and Los Cerritos Intermediate School being tested for tuberculosis in January. School officials said all of the children, ages 12 to 14, tested negative for the disease.

Marilyn Billimek, supervisor of Ventura County’s public health communicable disease program, said further tests showed that the classroom worker had a noncontagious microbacteria.

“She did not have tuberculosis, which is the contagious type of microbacteria,” Billimek said.

The worker’s illness and symptoms appeared very much like tuberculosis, Billimek said. But lab work proved otherwise.

“We have to presume it is microbacterial tuberculosis until proven otherwise,” she said. “There was no way of figuring it out upfront.”

School officials sent a letter home with children from the two affected schools to let parents know the scare was for naught.

“It is always better to err on the side of caution,” said school Supt. Jerry Gross.