A quarantined man carrying a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was identified Thursday as a 31-year-old lawyer. In a bizarre twist, the man's father-in-law happens to be a microbiologist specializing in the spread of the disease.
Bob Cooksey -- with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- wouldn't comment on whether he reported his son-in-law, Andrew Speaker, to federal health authorities.
But in a statement issued today, Cooksey said: "I wasn't involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel." He also stressed: "My son-in-law's TB did not originate from myself, or the CDC's labs."
Passengers identified
Meanwhile, all 28 passengers who sat near Speaker on Czech Airlines flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal last week have been identified, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The 19 Canadians -- 14 from Quebec and five from Ontario -- and nine people of other nationalities were in the five rows immediately around Speaker on the May 24 flight.
Public health authorities say they have the contact information for the passengers so they can be tested.
"Contact information for the remaining 163 passengers has been shared with the appropriate public health authorities," the agency says in a press release.
Experts believe the odds of transmission are low, but the passengers could face months of anxiety as they wait for test results that will determine whether they're infected with the extensively drug resistant strain of tuberculosis (XDR-TB).
Cooksey told The Associated Press that he gave Speaker some "fatherly advice" when he learned the man had the disease.
"I'm hoping and praying that he's getting the proper treatment, that my daughter is holding up mentally and physically," Cooksey told AP in an interview. "Had I known that my daughter was in any risk, I would not allow her to travel."
Speaker, a personal injury lawyer from Atlanta, said in a newspaper interview he knew he had tuberculosis when he flew from Atlanta to Europe in mid-May for his wedding and honeymoon.
But he said he didn't know until he was already in Rome that it was an extensively drug-resistant strain considered especially dangerous.
Speaker received warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, but he said he flew home for treatment anyway because he was afraid he wouldn't survive if he didn't reach the U.S.
Accompanied by his wife and federal marshals last Thursday, Speaker was flown from Atlanta to Denver, where he was treated at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
He was quarantined in the first such action taken by the federal government since 1963.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, is investigating how Speaker was able to travel back into the United States after his name was put on a no-fly list which was given to U.S. border guards.
His name was apparently added to a no-fly list only after he had already boarded a flight for Canada. But while CDC managed to alert U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, Speaker still managed to drive into New York State.
He is now being treated at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center with two antibiotics -- one oral, and the other taken intravenously.
Doctors have yet to determine how infectious he may be, but he is under strict quarantine in a room equipped with a ventilation system designed to prevent the escape of germs.
"He may not leave that room much for several weeks," hospital spokesperson William Allstetter told AP.
The head of the hospital's infectious disease division, Dr. Charles Daley, said the center may have treated two other patients with the same strain of TB since 2000 - although the strain had not yet been identified.
Both patients survived and eventually released.
"With drug-resistant tuberculosis, it's quite a challenge to treat this," Daley told CNN. "The cure rate that's been reported in other places is very low. It's about 30 percent for XDR-TB.
"This is a different patient, though. We're told that this is very early in the course, and most of the time when we get patients that it's very extensive and very far advanced. So I think we're more optimistic."
With files from The Associated Press
