An ongoing tuberculosis outbreak in the Kansas City, Kansas, area is posing a low risk to the general public, state officials said this week.

Common symptoms of active TB include coughing, chest pains, fever, fatigue and coughing up blood or phlegm. The airborne respiratory illness is usually transmitted during prolonged close contact with an infected person.

Most tuberculosis cases in Kansas have been in Wyandotte County in the northeast part of the state, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The agency said they hope to get

State and local public health officials in Kansas are responding to a tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in the Kansas City area, where approximately 70 patients are being treated for active disease, according to a press release from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s (KDHE’s) Division of Public Health.

We would expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Kansas Health System. But the high case counts in this outbreak were a “stark warning,

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment says Kansas is facing the largest documented tuberculosis outbreak in American history.

In late January 2025, news outlets reported on an outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in the Kansas City, Kansas, area. According to several of these reports, and posts sharing the news on social media, the outbreak was "unprecedented,