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 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 healt