World’s deadliest disease spreads thousands of miles from Maine outbreak in chilling update

A case of the deadly lung disease tuberculosis has been detected in a public high school days after officials announced there were multiple cases in a New England state. 

An active case of tuberculosis (TB) was reported in someone at Leesville High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, just weeks into the new schoolyear. About 2,500 students attend the school in grades nine through 12. 

Officials in Wake County, the county in which the school is located, said the person, who was not publicly identified, was present at the school sometime last week. 

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public Health said it is working with Wake County Schools to identify and notify anyone who may have had close contact with the person. 

The World Health Organization considers tuberculosis to be the deadliest disease in the world because it kills the most people of any disease, claiming about 1.25million lives every year, mostly in developing countries.

Announcement of the North Carolina comes just a few days after Maine officials reported three people in the state tested positive for TB. There was no connection between the patients, suggesting each was infected by a different source.

They were located in the Greater Portland area, officials said, and work is now underway to identify and isolate their close contacts.

There has been a recent uptick in TB cases in the US, with America reporting 10,347 infections in 2024, the most recent year available, up eight percent from the year before and the highest tally since 2011 when there were 10,471 cases recorded. 

Officials say the risk to the public is low, however. 

North Carolina’s CBS17 reported that parents of students in the high school received a notice from the Wake County Health Department’s Communicable Disease division informing them of ‘a situation affecting our school.’

The notice did not reveal the ‘situation’ was a case of TB, but said anyone exposed would be contacted by county officials. 

TB was confirmed on Friday. 

A county spokesperson said in an email to CBS 17: ‘We have been notified that an individual with active tuberculosis was present at Leesville [Road] High School last week.

‘We are working with Wake County Public School System to identify anyone who may have been in close contact with this person. Those individuals will be contacted directly with instructions for tuberculosis testing.’

According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, there were 215 TB cases in the state in 2023, the latest confirmed data available. This was an increase from 164 cases in 2022 and the highest in nearly a decade. 

Preliminary CDC data recorded 250 TB cases in North Carolina last year. 

So far in 2025, there have been 128 cases.

TB has a high fatality rate, killing up to half of patients if left untreated or unvaccinated. That’s far above the fatality rate for Covid, below one percent, measles, 10 percent for untreated patients, and Legionnaire’s disease, also around 10 percent.

Tuberculosis was effectively a death sentence in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was no cure, although it can now be prevented by vaccines and treated with antibiotics.

Tuberculosis killed more than 16,000 people in the US every year in the 1950s, but deaths have now dropped 28-fold to around 550 people annually.

Most tuberculosis cases in the US are imported or due to migration into the country, the CDC says, with most patients coming from outside America’s borders.

Further details on the North Carolina and Maine cases, including names, ages and exact locations were not revealed.

Dr Dora Anne Mills, chief health improvement officer for MaineHealth, warned that tuberculosis could only be passed on if someone was in ‘close, prolonged contact’ with an infectious person.

She told the Portland Press Herald: ‘The vast majority of people do not need to worry about this.

‘It’s not spread through casual contact like shaking hands or sharing a towel. It’s much less contagious than influenza or Covid.’

It can take days for the disease to infect a healthy person who lives in the same home as a patient.

Maine has already reported 28 cases of tuberculosis so far this year, figures show, just 11 cases below the 39 recorded in all of 2024.

Children, older adults and those with weaker immune systems are more vulnerable to an infection.

In the early stages, symptoms of the disease include a persistent and unexplained cough and sometimes coughing up blood or chest pain.

Patients may also suffer from unexplained weight loss, loss of appetite, fever and night sweats.

In later stages, patients may have severe breathing difficulties, extensive lung damage and the infection may spread to other organs like the liver or back, causing pain in these areas.

Patients die from the disease due to respiratory failure, or when damage to the lungs means they can no longer get enough oxygen into the body.

Doctors can treat the disease with antibiotics and can vaccinate against the disease using a shot called the BCG vaccine.

This is not routinely offered in the US, because the disease is not common, but can be requested for children, and leaves a small circular scar on the arm, a normal response and sign that the vaccine was effective.

It can also be given to adults, but it is less effective in this group and may lead to someone falsely testing positive for the disease.

In developing countries, the vaccine is administered to children under the age of 16.