FRIDAY, June 1 (HealthDay News) -- The Georgia man infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis insisted in a televised interview Friday that he was never told by health officials that he was contagious, and apologized to passengers who shared a series of airline flights with him last month.
"I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way. It's awful," Andrew Speaker told ABC's Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America from his room in a Denver hospital that specializes in infectious diseases.
Dressed in street clothes but wearing a face mask, Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer from Atlanta, apologized repeatedly to the dozens of airline passengers and crew members now awaiting their own test results because they had been exposed to him, the Associated Press reported.
"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," said Speaker, whose new father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a research microbiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's division of tuberculosis elimination.
Speaker said he, his doctors and officials from the CDC all knew he had been diagnosed with "extensively drug-resistant" TB, also called XDR-TB, before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told he wasn't infectious and did not pose a health risk to others. Health officials said they'd prefer he didn't fly, but no one ordered him not to, he said.
He said his father, also a lawyer, taped that meeting, the AP reported.
"My father said, 'OK, now are you saying, prefer not to go on the trip because he's a risk to anybody, or are you simply saying that to cover yourself?' And they said, we have to tell you that to cover ourself, but he's not a risk," Speaker said, the AP reported.
Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County (Georgia) Department of Health and Wellness, said Speaker was told in early May not to travel to Europe.
"He was told traveling is against medical advice," agreed Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine. Once Speaker was in Europe, "He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back," Cetron added.
Speaker said the CDC called him in Rome and informed him he had the drug-resistant form of TB and told him to cancel his commercial fight plans. But the CDC didn't offer him any help, he said, other than to meet with health officials in Italy. He contended in Friday's interview that the CDC was effectively abandoning him in Rome and eliminating his best chances for saving his life -- treatment at the TB facility at Denver's National Jewish Medical Center.
Meanwhile, Speaker continued to receive treatment Friday at the Denver hospital. He was flown to Denver from Atlanta, accompanied by federal marshals, on Thursday after being quarantined at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for two days.
Dr. Charles Daley, chief of the National Jewish Hospital's infectious-disease division, said he was optimistic Speaker could be cured because he appears to be in the early stages of the disease, the AP said.
Daley's colleague, Dr. Gwen Huitt, said Thursday that Speaker is "a young, healthy individual" who is "doing extremely well."
"By conventional methods that we traditionally use in the public health arena ... he would be considered low infectivity at this point in time," she said. "He is not coughing, he is healthy, he does not have a fever."
The hospital is testing other antibiotics and developing a drug regimen that could include as many as five antibiotics, Huitt said.
Speaker's new wife, Sarah, has tested negative for the respiratory disease.
Speaker had taken two trans-Atlantic flights last month for his wedding and honeymoon, possibly infecting fellow passengers in the process.
Speaker's father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, the CDC research microbiologist, issued a terse statement Thursday afternoon through the CDC, denying that he knew of his new son-in-law's travel plans.
"As part of my job, I am regularly tested for TB. I do not have TB, nor have I ever had TB. My son-in-law's TB did not originate from myself or the CDC's labs, which operate under the highest levels of biosecurity," said Cooksey, who has worked at the CDC for 32 years.
He added, "First and foremost, I am concerned about the health and well-being of my son-in-law and family, as well as the passengers on the affected flights."
Speaker flew on May 12 from Atlanta to Paris on Air France Flight 385, continued on to Prague, then took a return flight aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 to Montreal, Canada, on May 24, before driving back into the United States at Champlain, N.Y.
On Tuesday, CDC officials issued the first federal isolation order since 1963 to quarantine Speaker.
The agency has advised passengers who were on both flights to get tested for tuberculosis, although they are thought to be at low risk of infection from the disease, agency officials said Wednesday.
The CDC's Cetron noted that on the flight from Atlanta to Paris, some 40 to 50 passengers who sat near Speaker were those most likely at risk. Speaker probably sat in row 51. The same is true for the 30 passengers who sat near him on the flight from Prague to Montreal. On that flight, he sat in seat 12C.
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