A Rhode Island doctor with a private practice and privileges in local hospitals has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, state health officials said yesterday.

The doctor has been sick for about six weeks but does not appear to be highly contagious, said officials at the state Department of Health, who would not name the doctor or provide specifics on his or her practice or location.

Dr. Robert Crausman, director of the Health Department’s Center for Epidemiology and Infectious Disease, said about two dozen people — family members, coworkers and close associates of the doctor — are being tested for TB.

What happens next will depend on the results.

If the tests are negative, the department will retest the same people in about eight weeks. If any are positive, more people will be tested.

“Depending on what we find there, we’ll do a larger ring and a larger ring,” Crausman said.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that spreads through the air, causing disease in the lungs and other parts of the body. Symptoms include weight loss, night sweats, weakness or fatigue, loss of appetite and more than three weeks of coughing.

The state typically sees about 50 cases a year, most of them in Providence County, said Andrea Bagnall Degos, a Health Department spokeswoman. Last year there were 47, she said.

About 400 people were tested for TB in January after officials learned that a student had been attending Central Falls High School for several weeks with an active case. A second round of testing will take place next week to check for cases in which someone might have been exposed without testing positive in the first round, Degos said.

State health officials learned about the latest case from the doctor’s physician and made a public announcement because the case involved a health professional, Degos said. The doctor’s infection is not believed to be highly communicable because he has not been coughing, which suggests the infection is in the tissue of the lungs rather than the airways, Degos said.

Dr. David R. Gifford, the state’s health director, said in a statement that the latest case “shows us that TB is an ongoing illness in our state.”

“As we did in Central Falls, we are conducting an extensive investigation that typically takes two to three months to make sure no one was infected,” he said.

Gifford said in an interview that the Health Department would release information about the doctor only if it served the public interest. In this case, it would only raise fears, he said.

redgar@projo.com