SHENYANG, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Almost 3,000 faculties and students have been quarantined in a northeast China senior high school after 29 people contracted tuberculosis (TB), a local health official said on Sunday.

Only one student fell ill at the No. 1 Senior High School in June in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, the city health bureau head Li Ziming recalled.

When more students and some teachers caught the disease at the end of July, the local government immediately set up a leading group and deployed medical staff to prevent the spread of the disease. To date, 2,670 of the 2,859 students, teachers and staff members have received TB bacteria tests which are being examined.

Fourteen of the 29 patients are receiving free treatment at isolation wards in the city's TB prevention and treatment hospital and 15 others are reported to be in stable condition and are confined to the school or at home.

All other students, teachers and staffs of the school have been confined to the campus while health tests and treatment are carried out.

The school, established in 1904, is predominantly a boarding school catering to students from rural areas. As it is a key experimental school in Liaoning, the school usually starts summer vacation in early August, said an official.

However, the school did not start summer vacation on Saturday as planned due to the TB outbreak. Enditem