It is unclear what caused the outbreak, and state health officials did not immediately respond to questions about the origin.
While the state's health agency described the risk to the general public as "very low," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had four employees on-site in Kansas as of Tuesday to help with contact investigation, testing and screening, a spokesperson for the center said in an email. The team was also coordinating with community leaders to educate the public about tuberculosis, an infectious disease that is caused by bacteria and most often affects the lungs.
"This outbreak is still ongoing, which means that there could be more cases," Jill Bronaugh, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, wrote in an email Tuesday.
Briefly overtaken by the coronavirus as the world's deadliest infectious disease during the pandemic, tuberculosis reclaimed that grim distinction in 2023, when it took 1.25 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. The disease, which is curable, spreads through the air when infected people cough, sneeze or spit. Without treatment, which usually involves antibiotics, tuberculosis can be fatal. Symptoms can include a prolonged cough, fever and unexplained weight loss.
As of Friday, the most recent day that data was available from health officials, 67 people were being treated for active cases of tuberculosis as part of the outbreak in Kansas. There were 60 cases in Wyandotte County and seven in Johnson County.
An additional 79 people in the two counties were carrying dormant tuberculosis, commonly referred to as latent cases. Infected people who don't have the disease are not contagious, according to the WHO, which estimates that a quarter of the global population is infected with tuberculosis bacteria. The WHO predicts that 5% to 10% of those people will eventually get symptoms and develop the disease.
In a budget presentation to the Kansas Legislature on Jan. 14, Ashley Goss, the state's deputy secretary for public health, said that the people who were getting treated for tuberculosis appeared to be recovering.
Kansas is not the only state in the region dealing with tuberculosis. In Missouri, its neighbor to the east, 87 cases of the disease had been recorded from Jan. 1 through Tuesday, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Thirty-three of those cases were detected in the state's northwest region, which includes communities in the Kansas City, Missouri, region.
While the outbreak in Kansas has drawn attention, it is not the largest in recent U.S. history, according to the CDC.
An outbreak at homeless shelters in Georgia from 2015 to 2017 was responsible for more than 170 cases of tuberculosis and more than 400 latent cases.