KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Health officials in Johnson County provided an update Wednesday on tuberculosis cases connected to an ongoing outbreak that started in March 2024.
The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment says nine patients in Johnson County have completed treatment since March 2024 and are not infectious. Of the nine cases, seven were active and two were latent cases.
According to the outbreak tracker website maintained by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, several dozen patients have been treated in Wyandotte County.
State and local health officials say the risk to the general public has remained low throughout the outbreak.
Health agencies say they are continuing to conduct testing associated with the outbreak. The ongoing testing could identify new cases in Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
Officials at KDHE said late Monday that two deaths in 2024 were connected to the outbreak.
Recent coverage of the outbreak largely stemmed not from any increase in cases but from remarks made at a Kansas Senate committee hearing on Jan. 21, during which KDHE officials spoke about the outbreak as one of its 2025 goals.
A release Monday from a KDHE spokesperson described the outbreak as one of the largest in U.S. history since tracking began in the 1950s.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press Tuesday that two other recent TB outbreaks involved more patients.
An outbreak at homeless shelters in Georgia involved 170 active and 400 latent cases between 2015 and 2017. A nationwide outbreak in 2021 connected to contaminated tissue used in bone transplants involved 113 patients.
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