After three consecutive years of rising tuberculosis cases in the United States — which saw the case count climb from 9,622 in 2023 to a 14-year high of 10,395 in 2024 — public health officials had hoped 2025 would mark a turning point. The CDC's provisional tuberculosis data for 2025, released March 23, 2026, delivered mixed news: the national total dropped slightly to 10,260 confirmed cases, a 1 percent decline in cases and 2 percent decline in the national rate to 3.0 per 100,000 population. That marginal improvement, however, comes against a backdrop that public health experts are calling structurally fragile — and four states reported increases significant enough to demand attention.
The most striking state-level change came in New Hampshire, where TB cases doubled from 12 to 24 — a 100 percent increase in a single year. North Dakota saw a 64 percent increase. Colorado rose 32 percent. These are not large-population states by national standards, but double-digit percentage jumps in consecutive years signal that the infrastructure for TB detection, contact tracing, and treatment is under pressure.
