Health Alerts Issued for Southern California Campuses Due to Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
Health officials in Southern California are raising alarms after discovering that students and staff might have been exposed to a strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB).
On Thursday, the San Diego County health department issued a warning indicating that anyone who visited Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista between late October and mid-December 2025 could potentially be infected with this serious form of TB.
Specifically, this involves multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is, well, a rare but very severe variant that doesn’t respond to standard treatments and requires a more complex, lengthy regimen to address.
Authorities are currently working quickly to track down and inform anyone who might have come into contact with the infected individual.
Medical experts are quick to note that MDR-TB is not something you come across every day. “The positive takeaway is that tuberculosis, including this multidrug-resistant variant, is treatable and curable if caught early,” said Sayone Tiharolipavan from the San Diego Department of Public Health.
This disease spreads through the air—a cough, a chat, even just breathing can do it. So, indoor places like classrooms can escalate the risk pretty quickly.
Officials mentioned that the likelihood of being affected is mainly linked to how long someone spent on campus during the infectious period; brief encounters aren’t thought to carry much risk.
For those who test positive but show no symptoms, it usually means they have latent tuberculosis. This implies the bacteria are there but inactive. However, health experts warn that, without treatment, about 5% to 10% of such latent cases could progress to active TB.
One concerning aspect is that tuberculosis can linger unnoticed for quite a while, quietly spreading until finally diagnosed, which is a sobering thought.
In San Diego County, around 175,000 people are estimated to have latent TB infection, a number that underscores how prevalent these conditions can be. This warning arrives amidst a backdrop of rising TB cases, with hundreds reported annually. Yet, MDR-TB is relatively uncommon; experts noted only three documented cases in 2024 and two in 2025 in the county.
