TB patient ID’d as Atlanta lawyer
ATLANTA - The honeymooner quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was identified Thursday as a 31-year-old Atlanta personal injury lawyer whose new father-in-law is a CDC microbiologist specializing in the spread of TB.
Bob Cooksey would not comment on whether he reported his son-in-law, 31-year-old Andrew Speaker, to federal health authorities. He said only that he gave Speaker “fatherly advice” when he learned the young man had contracted the disease.
In a statement issued through the CDC, Cooksey also said that neither he nor his CDC laboratory was the source of the TB bacteria that infected his son-in-law.
The CDC had no immediate comment on how the case came to the attention of federal health authorities.
“I’m hoping and praying that he’s getting the proper treatment, that my daughter is holding up mentally and physically,” Cooksey told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Had I known that my daughter was in any risk, I would not allow her to travel.”
Speaker said in a newspaper interview that he knew he had TB when he flew from Atlanta to Europe in mid-May for his wedding and honeymoon, but that he did not find out until he was already in Rome that it was an extensively drug-resistant strain considered especially dangerous.
Despite warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, he flew home for treatment, fearing he wouldn’t survive if he didn’t reach the U.S., he said.
He was quarantined May 25, after his return from his honeymoon, in the first such action taken by the federal government since 1963.
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Source: news.yahoo.com
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