Kansas City-area residents may be alarmed to hear that Wyandotte County is at the epicenter of the largest recorded tuberculosis outbreak in U.S. history, according to state health officials. Fortunately, they say the health risk remains very low.

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.

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.

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,

Health officials in this U.S. state are reporting the largest tuberculosis outbreak in American history. Here's what to know about this lung disease.