Students and staff at a west Auckland college are to be screened for tuberculosis after a member of the school community was diagnosed with the potentially lethal disease.
Liston College principal Chris Rooney said the infected person was being treated in hospital.
He would not say whether they were a student or a member of staff.
The situation was under control and the school was still operating, he said.
"This is a precaution really. So far, it's business as usual."
The Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) has been working closely with the school and the infected person and sent letters to staff and students informing them of the situation.
"TB is a disease which develops slowly and is curable. We have all the systems and resources in place to cope with this situation," ARPHS medical officer of health Cathy Pikholz said.
"I do want to reassure parents, students and teachers that TB is not easy to catch -- it usually takes many hours of close contact with a person who has infectious TB."
Dr Pikholz said skin tests would be done on those who had been exposed, which could be followed up by further tests, including chest X-rays.
Most people with a positive results would have latent TB infection (LTBI), not active TB disease, she said.
"In people with LTBI, the body's immune system is able to suppress the germs, causing them to stay dormant or 'asleep' in their body. People with LTBI infection are well -- they do not have any symptoms and cannot pass on TB germs to other people around them. Most people who have LTBI never go on to develop TB disease."
Ministry of Health figures show New Zealand has an average of between 350-400 cases of TB each year, though there just 307 cases in 2010.
The symptoms of TB include a persistent cough for more than three weeks (sometimes with blood in the spit), unexplained weight loss, sweating (especially at night), unexplained fever, feeling tired all the time and shortness of breath.
