The Largest Tuberculosis Outbreak In U.S. History

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It’s easy to think that tuberculosis is an illness from another era. But the United States is actually experiencing the largest tuberculosis outbreak in its history.

The outbreak, which is concentrated in Kansas, seems to have been going on since 2021, but a lot of cases have been reported since 2024. Making things even more complicated is that the form of tuberculosis circulating right now appears to be resistant to two common treatment methods for the disease.

Unfortunately, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other government organizations are not allowed to publicly weigh in on the outbreak (or any other matters) due to a communications pause put in place by the Trump administration, per The Washington Post. So… there are some unanswered questions.

Roughly a quarter of the global population is estimated to have TB, but only about 5% to 10% of those develop symptoms.

How big is the tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas?

As of Jan. 24, 67 people are being treated for active TB, most of them in Wyandotte County, Bronaugh said. Another 79 have latent TB.

The state’s provisional 2024 count shows 79 active TB cases and 213 latent cases in the two counties where the outbreak is happening, Wyandotte and Johnson. Not all of those are linked to the outbreak and Bronaugh did not respond to requests for clarification.

The situation is improving, though: “We are trending in the right direction right now,” Ashley Goss, deputy secretary at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told the state Senate’s Committee on Public Health and Welfare Jan. 21.

Is the Kansas tuberculosis outbreak the largest in U.S. history?

Kansas health officials called the outbreak “the largest documented outbreak in U.S. history” since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began counting cases in the 1950s.

But a spokesperson for the CDC on Tuesday refuted that claim, noting at least two larger TB outbreaks in recent history. In one, the disease spread through Georgia homeless shelters. Public health workers identified more than 170 active TB cases and more than 400 latent cases from 2015 to 2017. And in 2021, a nationwide outbreak linked to contaminated tissue used in bone transplants sickened 113 patients.