The Kansas City area is facing one of the country’s largest outbreaks of tuberculosis in recent years.
According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, as of Jan. 24, there have been 67 confirmed cases of active TB in the state, concentrated around the Kansas City area. Additionally, there are 79 confirmed dormant or latent TB cases.
In neighboring Missouri, 87 cases had been recorded from Jan. 1 through Tuesday. There have been two deaths related to the outbreak so far, both of which occurred last year.
Health officials in Kansas say the risk to people living in surrounding counties and the general public is “very low” and that the department is following guidance from the CDC. The CDC said four of its staffers are on-site to help with the response, which includes measures such as contact tracing, testing, and screening.
State health officials have not said what caused the outbreak.
While the outbreak in Kansas has drawn attention, it is not the largest in recent U.S. history, according to the CDC.
In Georgia, outbreaks at homeless shelters from 2015 to 2017 were responsible for more than 170 cases of tuberculosis and more than 400 latent cases. In 2021, 113 people across the United States got the disease after receiving contaminated bone allograft tissue from an infected donor.
TB is an airborne illness that spreads from human to human. When someone with TB coughs or speaks, the germs are sent into the air, where they can linger for several hours before someone else breathes in that air and is infected with the illness.
TB symptoms are marked by a persistent cough that lasts three weeks or longer, blood or phlegm coming up in one’s cough, chest tightness or pain, fatigue, unusual weight loss, fever, chills, and night sweats, according to the CDC.
The outbreak comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ordered all federal health agencies to suspend their public communication, including health advisories and reports.
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According to the World Health Organization, every year about 10 million people worldwide contract the disease, with about 1.5 million dying as a result, making it “the world’s top infectious killer.”
The illness can be prevented via vaccination and ensuring those infected finish their course of treatment. The vaccine is not generally used because the U.S. has a low TB incidence rate.