San Francisco strip club linked to two cases of potentially deadly bacterial disease

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A downtown San Francisco strip club is now part of a public health investigation over a spread of tuberculosis, a potentially deadly bacterial disease, the city’s public health authorities told NBC Bay Area.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health said it’s looking into two confirmed cases at The Crazy Horse, a strip club on Market Street that’s been run for more than three decades.

The first confirmed case was in early October, the department said, after which it began efforts to trace who else may have been infected.

“These efforts are ongoing and at this time, the risk to the general public is low,” the department said in a statement. “If this status changes, we will let the public know.”

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease, which typically attacks the lungs, that appears in both active and latent forms. The disease may stay hidden for a while with no symptoms until it turns contagious and serious.

Symptoms of tuberculosis can include coughing up blood, a cough lasting more than three weeks, fatigue, and unintentional weight loss.

Contracting it requires prolonged exposure to a contagious person. The bacteria is airborne, and transmission could be higher in places that are crowded with poor ventilation, experts said.

Experts said the contract tracing may take a while for the city to provide any updates, as the bacteria behind tuberculosis grows slowly.

“They’ll do testing and probably repeat the testing in a few weeks, because again, sometimes the testing may be negative, but because [the bacteria] grows so slowly, eventually that test may turn positive if there was a true infection,” Peter Chin-Hong, a medical professor at UC San Francisco, told the outlet.

Chin-Hong cautioned against concluding an outbreak occurred, considering that it’s possible the two cases aren’t even linked and may have gotten their infection seperately from other places.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health said it is important for people at risk of tuberculosis to get tested and treated.

The California Post reached out to the strip club for any comment.

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