DENVER - The man quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis will likely spend up to two months in a hospital while he receives a battery of antibiotics and is evaluated for possible surgery, his doctors said.
Andrew Speaker is the first infected person quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963. In a TV interview Friday, Speaker repeatedly apologized to the dozens of airline passengers and crew members he may have exposed to the extremely drug-resistant infection while on a trans-Atlantic flight.
"I don't expect for people to ever forgive me. I just hope that they understand that I truly never meant to put them in harm," he said, his voice cracking.
Some South Carolina college students on the flight said they accepted Speaker's apology, though others said they remained worried about their future.
Jason Vik, a 21-year-old business student at University of South Carolina Aiken, said he felt like an outcast when he showed up for a television interview Thursday.
"The makeup ladies were so scared of us after we told them we weren't contagious," he said. "And they wore masks when they put on our makeup. There are lot of people that are just afraid of us. It's ridiculous and ignorant."
Speaker apologized on ABC's "Good Morning America" and said he didn't want any of his fellow passengers to be in the "state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion" he has been through the past week.
Twenty-six students and two faculty members from University of South Carolina Aiken were aboard the May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris. Many on the flight are now anxiously awaiting the results of their TB tests, though two people have tested negative, South Carolina health officials said.
Their identities weren't released, but University of South Carolina Aiken senior Laney Wiggins confirmed Friday she received good news.
"I'm very relieved to be done," Wiggins, 21, wrote in a text message to The Associated Press. Neither she nor Vik were sitting near Speaker. Vik did not return a phone message asking whether his test was returned.
Health officials have contacted 74 of the 310 U.S. citizens who were on the flight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That count includes all 26 who sat in the five-row area around Speaker -- the ones considered at greatest risk.
None is exhibiting symptoms, CDC officials said.
Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the CDC all knew he had TB that was resistant to some drugs before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was advised at the time by Fulton County, Ga., health authorities that he was not contagious or a danger to anyone.
Officials told him they would prefer he didn't fly, but no one ordered him not to, he said.
Speaker was in Europe when he learned tests showed he had not just TB, but an especially dangerous, extensively drug-resistant strain.
"He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back," said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine. But there were no legal orders preventing his travel, Cetron said.
Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.
"In hindsight, maybe it wasn't the best decision, but I did ask if it was voluntary. And in my mind, I thought that if I went there, if I waited until they showed up, that meant I was going to die," Speaker said.
Dr. Gwen Huitt said Speaker's infection was about the size of a tennis ball. If antibiotics fail to knock it out, he may have to undergo surgery to remove infected lung tissue.
Surgery to remove pieces of the lung was more common before the advent of sophisticated drugs in the 1960s. But it is coming back as a treatment because of the development of strains resistant to those drugs.
Doctors hope to determine where Speaker contracted the disease, which has been found around the world and exists in pockets in Russia and Asia. The tuberculosis was discovered when Speaker had a chest X-ray in January for a rib injury, doctors said.
