A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week.

After the CDC said the Kansas tuberculosis outbreak isn't the largest in documented history, KDHE clarified they meant the largest in a single year.

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.

Kansas has experienced a significant outbreak of tuberculosis with 67 active infections and even more latent cases of the disease.

A CDC spokesperson identified two outbreaks in the last decade linked to more tuberculosis cases than the ongoing outbreak centered in Wyandotte County.

State health officials said that dozens of people in the Kansas City, Kan., area have the disease, which has drawn a federal response.

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 wave of tuberculosis cases hitting the Kansas City, Kansas, metro area has become the largest documented TB outbreak in the United States since monitoring began in the 1950s, according to the state health department.

A large outbreak of tuberculosis has been reported in Kansas; is tuberculosis a public health concern in Louisiana? Find out here.

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.