KC Outbreak: Kansas City is facing a Tuberculosis outbreak but health experts urge the public not to panic

A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas has been reported, with 146 cases and two deaths being confirmed on Jan. 31 by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

TB is an airborne infection that spreads through close human contact. The initial stage of the infection is called an acute TB case, which often worsens into a latent case. A latent case happens when bacteria is in the body but doesn’t cause symptoms and can’t be spread.

The infection can then reactivate into an active case, which is when the bacteria spreads and causes symptoms such as coughing up blood and chest pains, according to University of Kansas Health System pulmonologist Kyle Brownback.

“An acute infection can last for a few weeks,” Brownback said. “But if you have a normal immune system, your body will fight it. It doesn’t go away like a common cold, it becomes what we call latent tuberculosis.”

In Wyandotte County, 60 confirmed cases of active TB have been reported, while Johnson County has seven, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

While safety precautions are often taken during any disease outbreak, the student population is at little risk, according to school nurse Stephaine Ptacek.

“You’re way more likely to get the flu or Covid or RSV right now,” Ptacek said. “There’s a [TB] outbreak happening, but it’s probably not something to be worried about.”

Active TB cases require at least six to 12 months of antibiotics which, according to Brownback, can cause many side effects, making the treatment more intense than other illnesses.

“The danger with latent tuberculosis is that it can reactivate later in your life if you become stressed,” Brownback said. “A big way that [infection] happens is if you start taking a medication that lowers your immune system.”

TB is considered one of the world’s top infectious killers, causing 1.5 million deaths annually, and estimates suggest that a fourth of the global population has been infected. However, according to the World Health Organization, most cases are latent.

Active cases spread by sharing respiratory droplets, making it difficult to become infected, according to the University of Kansas Vice President of Quality and Safety Dr. Timothy Williamson.

“It’s not [spread] by touching stuff, and you’ve got to be around someone who’s infected for a little bit of time [to become infected],” Williamson said. “So it’s not something you’re going to catch at the grocery or at a movie.”

Health experts have been monitoring an increase in tuberculosis cases in Kansas City since the beginning of 2024. The majority of active cases have been reported in Wyandotte County, and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says the number of infected people is decreasing.

“I think in families affected by the outbreak, the goal is to make sure they understand [the] treatment [needed] and ways to keep it from spreading,” Williamson said. “But this isn’t something the majority of the general public, even in Wyandotte County, needs to worry about.”

Although health experts have assured that the chances of TB are low, many still feel uneasy about the recent outbreak, including sophomore Anne Bowser.

“A very lethal disease that could affect people being around is very scary,” Bowser said. “[But] although it’s scary to hear about these diseases and viruses, I know it’s probably not going [to] affect me, hopefully.”

Currently, there is a vaccine for TB called Bacille Calmette-Guérin. However, it’s generally not used in the U.S. due to the low risk of the illness and the potential false positives the vaccine causes while testing, according to the CDC.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has not released the cause of the TB outbreak, but it continues to test for the infection and work to stop its spread.

“The main thing to take away is just that this [will] most likely not affect students or people who are young and healthy,” Brownback said. “But if they were to develop fevers lasting for several weeks, if they were ever to cough up blood [or] they have a known exposure to someone who has tuberculosis, they should visit their doctor and seek health care for that.”