Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Monica Nickelsburg)

Nearly 150 vendor employees at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., will need to be evaluated for tuberculosis after a fellow vendor was recently diagnosed with active TB disease. Public Health — Seattle & King County said it wants to test people as a precaution to rule out infection.

  • Vendor companies are reaching out to their affected employees to notify them, according to a post on the agency’s Public Health Insider website. Public Health has been on site this week to evaluate and test people who were exposed.
  • TB — an infectious disease caused by bacteria that are passed from person to person through the air — is much harder to spread than the cold or flu typically takes repeated and prolonged exposure in a confined indoor space to become infected.
  • Most cases of active TB are readily treatable with antibiotics that are commonly available and treatment typically takes six to nine months. The vendor with active TB disease is currently receiving treatment, according to Public Health — Seattle & King County.

GeekWire reached out for comment from Microsoft and will update this post when we hear back.

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