Fears are being raised in Maine after three people in the state tested positive for the world’s deadliest disease.
The patients were diagnosed with active tuberculosis and there was no connection between them, suggesting each was infected by a different source.
They are in the Greater Portland area, officials said, and work is now underway to identify and isolate their close contacts.
It comes amid an uptick in 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.
But officials said the risk to the public from the latest infections was low.
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.
The disease 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.
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