Gov. Landry is assuring the public there is currently no danger after a detainee from China tested positive for a rare, aggressive, and drug resistant form of tuberculosis while held at the Richwood Correction Center in Monroe this summer.
“What we’re dealing with is a form of a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis,” Gov. Landry told a news conference at the headquarters of GOHSEP on Wednesday. “And again at this time, we have no indication that the public is in any danger.”
The state filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and others, seeking to prevent the release of any prisoners from detention facilities without medical clearance from the state department of health.
“We demanded from ICE an assurance — a commitment — not to release from these facilities any potentially infected detainees without medical clearance by the (state) department of health,” said Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga, on behalf of Attorney General Liz Murrill. “ICE refused on that call. ICE sent us another email the same day again refusing to make that commitment.”
The lawsuit states that the patient, referred to as Patient 0, was detained back in July while crossing into California from Mexico.
The patient was transferred to the ICE processing center in Acadia Parish in August and released into the general population at that facility.
“From the federal facility, Patient 0 was transported to a medical facility,” Gov. Landry said. “At that medical facility, there was concern that the patient had active tuberculosis.”
Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham says the patient is now in isolation, receiving proper medication and is asymptomatic.
“It is the only case in Louisiana,” says Dr. Abraham. “And to the governor’s point, we normally do not see a case such as this except from a foreign country.”
The state says the patient may have come into contact with more than 200 detainees and countless other non-detainees.
Landry says this case underscores the importance of border security.
“I warned consistently that an open, pourous border — an unchecked border — was allowing people to come into this country with diseases that this country’s healthcare system has consistently worked to eradicate,” says Landry. “We are consistently seeing additional cases of meases (and) mumps. Now we have a rare form of tuberculosis.”
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