Colorado tuberculosis cases hold steady, as a major outbreak rocks Kansas – The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Sun
Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. Editor’s Picks: More wells on oil and gas orphan list | Behind the insurance crisis | Immigrant nonprofit ordered to stop workColorado is not seeing an unusual uptick in cases of tuberculosis, despite an ongoing outbreak next door in Kansas, the state Health Department says.The Kansas outbreak, focused in the Kansas City area, started last year, and it has since grown to be among the largest in the country since at least the 1950s. (You may have read that it is the largest in U.S. history, but that is erroneous.)Two people are reported to have died.Here in Colorado, cases of tuberculosis are more or less in line with recent historical averages, even though the number of cases reported in Colorado last year exceeded the number of cases reported so far in the Kansas outbreak.Confused? To an epidemiologist, the term “outbreak” has a specific meaning — it implies not just a new emergence of a lot of infections but also linked chains of transmission that bind those infections together.So, when Kansas reports 67 people being treated for active cases of tuberculosis as part of the outbreak, the implication is that those cases are all connected to some common origin of infection and being spread locally.Colorado, meanwhile, has not seen such sustained local transmission of tuberculosis. The state last year reported 78 cases of tuberculosis, in preliminary numbers. That’s down from 89 cases in 2023 but above the average of 70 cases per year the state reported pre-COVID pandemic.Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that spreads person-to-person through the air. The disease most often attacks the lungs and causes a chronic cough, among other symptoms. It can take two forms: active tuberculosis, where a person is showing symptoms and capable of spreading the disease, and inactive or latent tuberculosis, where the disease is lying dormant and the person cannot spread it. A latent case can turn active at any time.Though tuberculosis was common historically, the highest number of tuberculosis cases recorded in the United States was in the very first year the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keeping track — in 1953, with more than 84,000 cases.Annual case numbers remained above 20,000 well into the 1990s, but then dropped over the next two decades. The 9,633 cases reported in 2023 — the most recent year for which the CDC has finalized data — were an increase over the prior handful of years but still near historic lows.Transmission patterns have changed, as well.Sustained person-to-person transmission of the disease within the United States is now rare. From 2021 through 2023, the U.S. reported only 34 infection clusters that had 10 or more cases associated with them.But tuberculosis circulates more widely in some countries outside the United States, and it is not uncommon for states to report cases in people who traveled to or immigrated from those areas.In the early 1990s, roughly two-thirds of tuberculosis cases reported were in people born in the United States, according to the CDC. In recent years, that proportion has flipped, with about three-quarters of cases now occurring in people born outside the U.S.This trend holds for Colorado, as well. “In general, our cases each year tend to be sporadic or associated with limited local person-to-person transmission,” Kristina Iodice, a communications director with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, wrote in an email. “We are not seeing increases similar to those in Kansas.”Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
John Ingold is a co-founder of The Colorado Sun and a reporter currently specializing in health care coverage.

Born and raised in Colorado Springs, John spent 18 years working at The Denver Post. Prior to that, he held internships at…
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Source: http://coloradosun.com/2025/01/31/colorado-tuberculosis-cases-kansas-outbreak/