Valley Fever sickens 28 solar workers in San Luis Obispo County

Some of the 24,000 mirrors called "heliostats" at the eSolar Sierra SunTower power plant in Lancaster, California in the Mojave Desert approximately 70 miles (110 km) north of Los Angeles May 12, 2011. eSolar's concentrated solar power (CSP) system uses the movable heliostats to reflect solar heat to a thermal receiver mounted atop two towers. Electrical power is produced when the focused heat boils water within the thermal receiver and produces steam, which is then piped to a nearby reconditioned 1947 GE turbine generator to produce electricity. Sierra SunTower is the only commercial CSP tower facility in North America.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan to meet with Department of Corrections officials on Thursday to discuss the spread of Valley Fever at two Central California prisons.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plan to meet with Department of Corrections officials on Thursday to discuss the spread of Valley Fever at two Central California prisons.

The court has ordered the relocation of an estimated 3,200 inmates with heightened risk for the disease.

But Valley Fever is not just striking the prison population. The airborne disease has sickened 28 workers at two large solar-power construction sites in San Luis Obispo County.

For more on why we're seeing these infections, we're joined by Dr. John Galgiani, a Valley Fever expert and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Arizona.