The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reports that the number of TB cases connected to an outbreak in the Kansas City area is still rising.
Jill Bronaugh, the director of communications for the health department, said in an update Tuesday that the outbreak, which started a year ago, claimed two lives in 2024. In Kansas, at least 67 people were receiving treatment for active TB as of Friday.
Of those, all but seven occurred in Wyandotte County, which is home to Kansas City; the remaining occurrences occurred in Johnson County, which is nearby. The health agency has also verified 79 dormant TB infections in the two counties, which means the host is not communicable and does not exhibit symptoms. Approximately 5% to 10% of inactive cases progress to active disease if treatment is not received.
More than 70 active and more than 200 inactive TB cases were recorded by the health department last year; however, Bronaugh stated that the case counts are still preliminary and will be formally evaluated and verified by the CDC by the end of March 2025.
The health department said in its update that the TB outbreak in Kansas was the biggest outbreak in U.S. history since the 1950s, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started tracking and reporting cases.
However, the CDC refuted that description by citing a TB outbreak that occurred in homeless shelters in Georgia between 2015 and 2017, during which time over 170 active cases and over 400 inactive cases were found. A nationwide outbreak in 2021 that was connected to a bone graft product and impacted 113 individuals following surgery was also mentioned by the FDA.
A bacterial infection spread through the air, tuberculosis mostly affects the lungs. According to the CDC, those who are ill may have chest pain, feel weak, and cough up blood or mucus from their respiratory tract.
Antibiotics are used to treat patients with active or latent tuberculosis, and treatment can last anywhere from four to nine months. The illness might be lethal if treatment is not received. From the 1600s to the 1800s, the CDC estimates that 25% of all deaths in Europe were caused by tuberculosis.
In nations where tuberculosis is more prevalent, infants and children are given the vaccine, which was initially created in 1921 but is not typically used in the United States.
“The Kansas outbreak “is still ongoing, which implies that there could be additional instances,” Bronaugh stated in the health department’s report.
According to the CDC’s most recent data, the number of tuberculosis cases in the United States increased year between 2020 and 2023. Nearly three decades of decline were reversed by that increasing trend.