No, you probably didn’t get tuberculosis at Sunday’s Chiefs game. A yearlong outbreak of the bacterial infection in the Kansas City metropolitan area has raised concerns about spread locally and nationally.

The United States is experiencing one of its largest outbreaks of tuberculosis since the CDC began reporting in the 1950s.

Tuberculosis cases linked to an ongoing outbreak in the Kansas City area continue to climb. The outbreak, which began a year ago, killed two people in 2024.

Kansas is currently experiencing a rare outbreak of tuberculosis (TB), the world’s deadliest infectious disease. TB is spread via germs in the air and usually affects the lungs but can also affect the brain, the kidneys or the spine.

You don’t need to have the vaccine to attend colleges in Kansas, but some do require you to get tested for tuberculosis before enrolling and going to classes on campus, like at the University of Kansas.

A tuberculosis outbreak that began a year ago in two counties in the Kansas City, Kan., area has caused 67 active cases and 79 latent cases of the disease. Two deaths have been reported. But public health officials say the risk to the public remains low.

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.

The outbreak is real, but Jill Bronaugh, the communications director at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), told Snopes via email that it posed a "very low risk" to the general public.

A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas has killed two people and caused at least 146 to become infected with the potentially deadly respiratory disease during one of the largest outbreaks in the nation's history.

“While TB cases in Wyandotte and Johnson counties are getting attention, we want to assure our residents that what we’re seeing in Saline County is normal,” said Jason Tiller, Saline County Health Officer. “There is no immediate reason for concern. TB is preventable, treatable, and does not pose a general risk to the public.”

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