2 TB Cases Prompt Tests at 2 Schools : Health: Students, staff at Bolsa Grande High and Irvine Valley College will be screened. Early detection should limit outbreak, officials say.

More than 200 Orange County high school and community college students and their teachers will be tested for tuberculosis beginning today because they were in classes with two students diagnosed with the infectious disease.

About 107 students and teachers at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove will be tested on campus today. An additional 100 students and teachers at Irvine Valley College, where classes ended May 24, were notified by mail to report to county Health Care Agency offices this week for skin tests. Officials are relying on voluntary cooperation from them.

County health officials said this is unlike the 1993 outbreak at La Quinta High School in Westminster, where all 1,300 students and staff members were tested and 17 had active cases of TB. A federal investigation by the Centers for Disease Control concluded that that outbreak was exacerbated by a physician who failed to immediately report the case of a student who had a drug-resistant strain of the disease.

This time, county health officials said, the two cases were detected and reported early, which they predict will limit exposure.

“Neither one of these young people had an extensive amount of time to spread the disease,” said Dr. Penny Weismuller, Health Care Agency manager for disease control. “This is not a disease to be feared, because there is effective treatment as long as the diagnosis is made promptly.”

The names of the two students have not been released.

Results of the skin tests will be reported Thursday to students. Health care officials will have a chest X-ray machine on campus that day to determine if those who test positive have active cases of the disease.

Students and teachers with borderline test results will be asked to take a chest X-ray, according to school district officials.

“Particularly in public schools, they always tend to err on the conservative side,” said Alan Trudell, spokesman for Garden Grove Unified School District.

Although county officials are asking for voluntary cooperation from the students at Irvine Valley College, they will order testing of those who refuse to cooperate, Weismuller said.

Tuberculosis is typically spread through the air by coughing or sneezing and attacks the lungs. Last year, 369 cases of TB were reported in Orange County, a 14% reduction from the 431 cases in 1993, the year of the La Quinta outbreak. As of May 26 this year, 125 cases of TB have been reported in the county.

If the tests reveal an infection rate higher than approximately 25%, county officials will test an extended “circle of contacts” made by the students. But casual contact does not usually cause infection, Weismuller said.

“It requires extensive, close contact with someone who is infectious,” Weismuller said. “Usually, you’re looking at hours and hours of exposure over a period of months to require infection.”