TB diagnosis usually starts with asking someone whether they have any of the classic symptoms of TB (coughing, fever, loss of weight, and drenching night sweats in adults). Traditionally, only people who have one or more of these symptoms are offered confirmatory molecular tests.
But, more than half of the people diagnosed with TB in South Africa’s first National TB Prevalence Survey would have been missed had asymptomatic people not been offered additional tests as part of the survey. Evidence is mounting that, as with COVID-19, people can have active TB disease and be infectious without having any symptoms.
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