The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is mostly empty for Spring Break. Cameron County Public Health officials said they hope the weeklong vacation will help stop the spread of tuberculosis.

On Thursday, Cameron County Public Health confirmed more than 200 people were potentially exposed to someone with the disease.  

Since then, the health department has been reaching out to students and staff who may have come in contact with the disease.

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Cameron County Public Health Administrator Esmeralda Guajardo said making contact with people to get tested has always been an issue.

According to Guajardo, the challenge is how spread out the university is.

"We don't have issues with HIPPA or identifying individuals, we can't say which classes — so it's very difficult for us at this point,” Guajardo said.

As previously reported, the case at the university is connected to a Brownsville daycare tuberculosis investigation.

“If someone has been identified as a tuberculosis contact, that does not mean that people should be concerned about being around that person,” Guajardo said. “We just want to test them to be on the safe side to make sure they don't have TB.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tuberculosis symptoms include a persistent cough, pain in the chest, chills, night sweats and unexplained weight loss. 

Symptoms could appear within weeks, months or years, and in some cases not at all.  

The health department said they hope more students and staff will take time to get tested during Spring Break. 

Preliminary information from the daycare investigation show that there have been zero people who tested positive. Official numbers will come out once all results from adults and children come back later this week.

The Cameron County Public Health Department is asking UTRGV students and staff members to pay attention to calls from unknown numbers in case its health department employees contacting them. The health department is also reaching out to people via email, so go through your inbox and your spam folder to ensure you’re not missing their message. 

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