Lely High students and staff tested for TB

COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. – About 100 students and staff at Lely High School were tested for tuberculosis on Wednesday. This comes after a student tested positive for the disease over winter break.

“It was no biggie. It just feels good to know if you have it or not.” John Naykeen is a Junior at Lely High School. He said health officials tested him for TB during first period.

“Asked you a couple questions like have you been coughing? Having headaches? Stuff like that, and then you go in to a little room and they take your blood and tell you in a week they’ll have your results.”

When those results come back the Collier County Health Department expects some of them will be positive. “The important thing to know is a positive doesn’t mean someone is infectious,” said Deb Millsap.

“We don’t believe anyone has an active case of TB. They might come up with positive, meaning they have dormant TB meaning the bacteria is in their system it’s not causing them any problems”

Those individuals will then be treated to prevent future problems. But how they were exactly exposed may never be known.

“What we won’t know is whether or not a positive that we detect from this testing is positive because they were exposed to the infectious case or did they get it from the infectious individual or did that get it because they were exposed to TB some other time,” said Millsap.

The health department said the student that was infected is doing fine. They aren’t releasing whether or not the student has returned to school to protect their identity.