Two people who had been in contact with British NET teacher Clare Lennon, whose case has sparked a Hong Kong-Britain alert on tuberculosis, have been found to have 'active TB and latent TB', the Department of Health said yesterday.
A department spokesman said several more people had been identified for further tests for the disease, and they have been referred to chest clinics for free tests.
The Sunday Morning Post reported yesterday that the department and the British Health Protection Agency were urgently seeking at least 300 people, 80 per cent of them schoolchildren, who may have been in contact with Lennon.
She died days after her April 17 return to England. Lennon had cancer and tested positive to the TB mycobacterium in tests done at St Paul's Hospital in Causeway Bay, the department said.
But the hospital, where she was treated from April 10 to 17, had delayed notifying the department, as required under disease regulations, by 10 days - not eight days as previously reported, the department said.
The spokesman said a colleague of Lennon's 'was diagnosed to have active TB, but it is regarded as non-open [not infectious]'.
The colleague is a Hong Kong-Chinese female teacher at the Hong Kong Institute of Education Jockey Club Primary School in Lo Ping Road.
