21-05-2025
Outbreak fears as world's deadliest disease hits New York high school sparking panic among parents
Panic has erupted at a New York high school after more than a hundred students and staff were tested for the world's deadliest disease.
A student infected with tuberculosis attended Sachem East High School in Suffolk County, Long Island, earlier this month.
More than 116 students and seven teachers are now being asked to get tested for the disease to ensure that they are not also infected, with results expected later today.
Principal Lou Antonetti alerted parents to the potential outbreak in a letter urging them to get their children tested.
One mother at the school raised concerns to local media, saying that she felt more needed to be done to protect students and staff from the disease.
The World Health Organization considers tuberculosis to be the most deadly disease in the world because it kills the most people, claiming about 1.25million lives every year — mostly in developing countries.
The infection was considered to be a death sentence in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was no cure, although it can now be treated with antibiotics — and also vaccinated against.
Most tuberculosis cases in the US are imported or due to migration into the country, the CDC says, with the vast majority of cases reported nationally diagnosed in people who were not born in the country.
Tuberculosis is highly infectious, spread via droplets released in coughs and sneezes that hang in the air for hours after an infectious patient passes.
In some cases, the disease can lie dormant in the body for years, but in others it triggers a quick infection that attacks the lungs.
Symptoms begin as a cough that lasts for three weeks or more and coughing up blood before progressing in untreated cases to respiratory failure, or being unable to breathe, and death.
Writing to parents of children who may have been exposed to the disease on May 16, Principal Antonetti wrote: 'We are contacting you because we have reason to believe that you had contact with this individual during the time (s)he was infectious.'
Tests were carried out free-of-charge at the school on Monday, May 19, with doctors using a skin test — where a clear fluid is injected under the skin and doctors wait for hard, raised bumps to appear, which shows someone has the disease.
More tests will be carried out two months later in July, covering the two-month incubation period the disease has before an infected person shows symptoms.
Health officials are carrying out contact tracing to establish who had spent long periods near the infected student, which would put them at higher risk of infection.
Janie Gallo, a Farmingville resident and parent at the school, blasted the authorities, telling local station news12: 'What's being done to ensure the safety of the kids when we, as parents or guardians, send them to school?!'
Another resident, Anton Kovary, said: 'I've had TB before, so you can fight it. You can overcome any kind of disease that you have.'
A third, called Lisa Russo, added: 'It's only one student anyway that had it, and everybody is being tested, so I'm not worried about it.'
Suffolk county, which covers most of Long Island and is where the school is based, is wealthy — with the average resident earning $128,000 per year on average.
Data for Sachem East High School for 2022 and 2023 shows, however, that about 32 percent of children attending the school — or 663 individuals — are considered to be economically disadvantaged.
About six percent of attendees, or 119 students, are also considered to be English language learners — meaning they speak a language other than English at home and require support to learn the language.
In an active tuberculosis case, symptoms begin as a bad cough that lasts for three weeks, pain in the chest and coughing up blood.
In serious cases, the disease causes extensive damage to the lungs — leading to trouble breathing and, eventually, death.
Tuberculosis can now be effectively treated with antibiotics, and there is also a vaccine available — called the BCG vaccine.
This is not routinely offered in the US, because the disease is not common, the vaccine is less effective in adults and it can lead to false-positive test results.
But parents do have the option to vaccinate their children. In developing countries, it is given to young children, but may also be administered to children under the age of 16 years.
It is famous for typically leaving a small and circular scar on the arm, which is a normal response to the vaccine and a sign that it was effective.
There were 10,347 tuberculosis cases detected in the US in 2024, of which about one in ten — or 1,089 infections — were recorded in New York state.
Despite its high prices, New York City continues to be the most-visited large city in the US welcoming 64.3million travelers in 2024 alone.
Experts say this international travel raises the risk of people bringing diseases, such as tuberculosis, from other countries into the US.
At least two people died from tuberculosis in the US last year amid an outbreak in Kansas City, which became the largest in the country since the 1950s.
