Group of OCC Students, Instructors to Be Tested for TB : Health: Those who attended summer courses with a Los Angeles woman later found to have communicable tuberculosis will be screened Tuesday.

As many as sixty Orange Coast College students and three instructors who attended classes with a woman later found to have communicable tuberculosis will be screened for exposure to TB on Tuesday by county health officials, a college spokesman said.

The students and instructors attended classes this summer with the Los Angeles woman, who dropped out in August to go on a dance tour, college spokesman Jim Carnett said. She then began to experience symptoms and the TB was diagnosed in a Miami hospital in early September, he said. She notified the college later in the month.

Penny Weismuller, disease control manager at the Orange County Health Care Agency, said health officials are most concerned about 20 to 25 students and an instructor who attended two sessions of a drama class with the woman in August. Others were notified of the screening as a precaution, but the woman was not believed to have the communicable disease when she attended any other classes, Weismuller said.

Carnett said the students and instructors have been informed by mail of the TB skin-test screening. The tests, which involve pricks to the skin of the forearm, will be administered Tuesday in the college. On Thursday, their forearms will be checked for a reaction indicating exposure to TB.

Those who test positive will need a chest X-ray to see if the disease can be detected in the lungs, Weismuller said. A sputum test would be needed to determine whether the disease is communicable.

Many people who have positive skin tests never develop active tuberculosis. The disease, which usually affects the lungs, is transmitted by air from person to person, often through coughing, sneezing, laughing or singing.

Carnett said the current screening is not related to the last round of tests in the spring, organized after another student with active tuberculosis attended classes with 146 students, three faculty members and two course assistants. No one tested was found to have developed active disease.