Tuberculosis exposure investigation underway at daycare facility

By Stefany Rosales

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    BROWNSVILLE, Texas (KRGV) — The Cameron County Public Health Department launched a contact investigation with the help of Kiddie City Academy after someone linked to the daycare tested positive for tuberculosis.

The public health department said nearly 90 employees and children at the daycare, located at 995 W Ruben M Torres Sr. Blvd., Suite H, need to get tested.

“I can understand why parents are very, very worried — we are too,” Kiddie City Academy Owner and Founder Beatriz Mendoza said. “And that is the whole reason of the urgency.”

Mendoza said the Cameron County Public Health Department alerted that her business was exposed to someone with tuberculosis

“Unfortunately, it happened here. But we do have the responsibility we have to take care of the kids — we have to move as fast as we did,” Mendoza said.

On Tuesday, parents and staff were given educational material on tuberculosis, the highly contagious disease that can affect the lungs.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children younger than the age of five are more likely to get sick with active tuberculosis, and to get sick more quickly than adults.

Kiddie City Academy students and staff members were tested for tuberculosis on Wednesday.

“In the past, we’ve done tuberculosis investigation — contact investigation where we required a skin test or maybe a blood test,” Cameron County Public Health Administrator Esmeralda Guajardo said. “For these little ones, we had to do a skin test and an x-ray.”

Guajardo said the department was made aware of the tuberculosis case on Thursday, March 6.

Under federal law, the county cannot release the person’s identity. The health department could only say the infected patient has a link to the daycare.

Guajardo said the public health department is still investigating where else this person went to see if there were other possible exposures.

“A tuberculosis case could be somewhere, spending long periods of time on a continuous basis, and those are the people that we’re trying to narrow down so we can do contact investigation,” Guajardo said.

In Dec. 2024, 390 people were tested for tuberculosis following an exposure at two nursing homes in Harlingen. Twenty-seven people were positive for inactive tuberculosis, meaning they only need to take preventative medication and they were not infectious.

Mendoza is hoping for good results for the students and staff at her daycare.

“It is scary, it is worrisome, but we are doing what need to be done in order to be vigilant in order to be proactive, “Mendoza said.

Parents are not being tested because at the moment, this exposure only affects people who have been exposed for a long period of time.

The skin test results for the children should come in on Friday, March 14, and the blood test results for adult staff members are expected sometime next week.

Channel 5 News will follow up with the Cameron County Public Health Department for the results.

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