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Health officials in Kansas say they are battling an “unprecedented” tuberculosis outbreak that’s infected at least 146 people in the state’s northeast.
As of Friday, there are 67 people currently being treated for active cases of the bacterial disease, commonly known as TB, in the Kansas City metro area, Jill Bronaugh, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment told HuffPost in an email Monday.
Sixty of these active cases are in Wyandotte County, and the remaining seven are in Johnson County.
An additional 79 inactive infections, where the person shows no symptoms, have been confirmed in the same areas, with 77 in Wyandotte County and two in Johnson County, Bronaugh said.
“The current [metro-area] outbreak is the largest documented outbreak in U.S. history, presently,” she said. This record dates back to the 1950s when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started monitoring and reporting TB cases, she said.
Bronaugh noted that there could be more cases not yet confirmed.
Last year, KDHE reported 79 active and 213 latent cases in both counties from an outbreak and non-outbreak. There were also two reported TB deaths that were associated with this current outbreak, she said.
Deputy Secretary For Public Health Ashley Goss updated the state’s Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee last week about the outbreak, which she called “unprecedented.”
The CDC is “on the ground” in Kansas to offer the health department support with the outbreak, which the KDHE first became involved with last summer, she said.
“We are trending in the right direction right now. More to come on that. Hopefully, we can get it wound down quickly,” she said Tuesday.
Representatives with the CDC did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment Monday.
TB spreads from a bacterium ― or germ ― that is passed through the air when someone infected coughs, speaks or sings. The disease usually affects the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body, such as the brain, kidneys or spine, according to the CDC.
Not everyone infected becomes sick. Some people can be diagnosed with inactive cases of TB when they have smaller quantities of the bacterium in their body that are alive but latent.
Though people with inactive cases don’t have symptoms and cannot spread the disease to others, they still need treatment to prevent the bacterium ― which can live in the body for years without causing symptoms ― from becoming active, the CDC says.
Kansas’ health department said it is offering free TB treatment to those infected who are uninsured or if the treatment isn’t covered by their health insurance.
The disease’s symptoms include a long-term cough, fever, chest pain, chills, coughing up blood or sputum, weakness or fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite, and night sweats. TB is one of the world’s leading infectious disease killers, with untreated cases potentially resulting in death.
Though a vaccine exists, it’s not generally administered in the U.S., which has one of the lowest TB incidence rates in the world, according to the CDC and World Health Organization.
Outside of the U.S., low- and middle-income countries see 98% of all TB cases. The countries with the highest number of cases are India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Pakistan, according to the WHO.
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The last case surge seen in the U.S. was in 2023 when there were 9,633 cases confirmed nationwide, the highest number in a decade. Case counts increased among all age groups and among U.S.-born and non-U.S.–born persons during this time, though cases were still disproportionately higher among non-U.S.–born persons and persons from racial and ethnic minority groups.
In offering potential reasons for the surge, U.S. health officials noted that cases had risen globally the year before and that resources usually given to TB programs in the U.S. had been “severely taxed” and diverted toward the COVID-19 response instead.
“These factors, along with changes in migration volume probably contributed to the decrease in the number of cases observed in 2020, and to the subsequent rise in case counts and rates since 2020,” the CDC said.