He caused an international health scare by flying to his wedding in Greece and later to Canada while infected with extremely drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis. Now Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old American, says his doctors told him “repeatedly” that he was not contagious – even to his new wife. “I really believed I wasn’t putting people at risk because that was what I was told,” Speaker told ABC News.
He is smear-negative, meaning no bacilli are visible in his sputum. Such people can transmit TB, but rarely do if they are symptom-free, like Speaker. “Someone not coughing, with a low burden of bacteria,…
