Some students at Charlotte middle school may have been exposed to tuberculosis

CHARLOTTE — Some kids at a Charlotte middle school may have been exposed to tuberculosis, a bacteria infection that impacts the lungs.

The Mecklenburg County Health Department sent letters to families, notifying them they may have been exposed at Alexander Graham Middle School.

Doctors say now is the time, before systems show up, to take precautions.

Dr. Tony Moody is a pedestrian, professor at Duke Medical School and an infectious disease specialist who helps develop vaccines.

He says TB isn’t just spread through the air. It can stay there even after the sick person leaves.

Either by coughing or talking you can actually launch it into the air, and the air in the room that you’re in actually becomes infectious because it just stays hung up in the air.

Symptoms include: a cough and/or fever that won’t go away, feeling short of breath, night sweats and losing weight without trying.

Moody says it’s important to track TB before symptoms appear, to limit the spread.

In some cases, it can be deadly.

“The longer you’re with somebody who has something, the more likely you are to get exposed to it,” Moody said. “With TB, one of the tricky things is a lot of people can be exposed and never develop symptoms. They may never become infected.”

That’s why Mecklenburg County health officials sent a letter to families telling them they, “may have been near someone with a sickness called tuberculosis at Alexander Graham Middle School.”

Channel 9 asked Moody what questions parents should be asking right now.

“So the thing that they should think about is how close were their kids maybe in contact with whoever this index case is,” the doctor said. “Talk to the health department. What is the exposure? How big a ring should we be looking at, and then that what they will do is likely start considering who should be tested.”

We don’t know who exactly was exposed.

We checked with families in the school drop-off line. None wanted to talk on camera. Some said they’d heard about the letters, but no one we spoke to had gotten one.

Channel 9 reached out to the health department and the school district to find out more details.