Jan. 28 (UPI) — A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas has killed two people and caused at least 146 to become infected with the potentially deadly respiratory disease during one of the largest outbreaks in the nation’s history.
As of Friday, at least 67 cases of active TB were reported in Kansas, including 60 in Wyandotte County and seven in Johnson County, the Kansas Department of Public Health announced.
Wyandotte County includes Kansas City, which is the county seat, and areas west of Kansas City, while Johnson County is located directly south of and adjacent to Wyandotte County.
TB is a bacterium that usually affects the lungs but can affect other parts of the body and has two types — active and inactive, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Active TB makes people feel sick and can spread to others, while inactive TB does not make people sick and does not spread to others.
TB generally spreads while airborne when an infected person coughs, speaks or sings, but it also can spread from one person to another through direct contact.
Antibiotics can treat TB and stop the active variety of the disease from becoming infectious soon after initiating antibiotics treatment.
The breakout began in 2024 and claimed two lives, Kansas Health Department communications director Jill Bronaugh announced Tuesday.
Bronaugh said at least 67 people in Kansas were undergoing treatment for active TB as of Friday, but those identified with inactive TB also are undergoing treatment.
Leaving inactive cases of TB untreated could cause between 5% and 10% to develop active TB.
University of Kansas Health System director of prevention and control Dr. Dana Hawkinson said it’s common to see some TB cases every year but the current outbreak has greatly exceeded the normal numbers.
Most of the patients identified with TB during the current outbreak have not been especially ill, but some have serious symptoms.
The Kansas Health Department said the outbreak is the largest since the Centers for disease Control and Prevention started monitoring and tracking cases in the 1950s.
The CDC said that is false and cited a TB outbreak in Georgia homeless shelters that infected more than 170 with active TB and more than 400 with inactive TB from 2015 to 2017.
More recently, 113 people were afflicted nationally with active TB in 2021 due to exposure to a bone graft product that infected 113 people after undergoing surgery.
The World Health Organization in October announced more than 8 million people around the world were diagnosed with TB in 2023.
The disease killed 1.25 million, making it the world’s deadliest disease after COVID-19 briefly was the deadliest during the global pandemic.