A patient misdiagnosed by the CDC as suffering from a rare and extremely dangerous form of tuberculosis and subsequently quarantined says the agency should apologize for its mistake and what it entailed.

During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer from Atlanta, GA., said the CDC’s decision to issue a rarely used federal public health order to quarantine him “scared millions of people around the world,” creating widespread panic.

In May, Speaker was diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis known as XDR-TB, a strain that is highly contagious and transmitted through sneezing and coughing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered quarantine and alerted health authorities around the world as he was traveling in Europe and Canada.

At the time, Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC's director, said the agency “felt it was our responsibility to err on the side of abundant caution.”

Recent tests show Speaker is suffering from MDR-TB, a multi-drug resistant strain of the disease that is less dangerous than XDR-TB.

His treating physician, Dr Charles Daley of the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, said during a press conference that MDR-TB is still a serious disease but good news for Speaker and those he may have infected during his travels.

Dr Mitchell Cohen of the CDC called the agency’s measures in the case as “sound and appropriate” during the same press conference, adding that both forms of the disease should be viewed with the same seriousness.