Between 2012 and 2015, 1,565 refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, according to annual reports published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The CDC data, which has been public but obscure until now, shows that the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB in recent years is more than three times greater than previously reported by any media outlet.
The number of refugees diagnosed with TB in the United States has increased every year since 2012, the first year the CDC began publishing data on foreign-born cases of the disease by category, when 358 were diagnosed. In 2013, 396 refugees were diagnosed with TB. The following year, 2014, 402 refugees were diagnosed with TB, and in 2015, the number of refugees diagnosed with TB rose again to 409. Data for 2016 has not yet been reported.
In October, Breitbart News reported that 476 cases of active TB among refugees have been reported in the fifteen states that made that data available. Thirty-five states did not make the data available, even though they had apparently reported it to the CDC:
At least eight cases of active TB were diagnosed among refugees upon their arrival in Minnesota in 2015, bringing the total number of cases of active TB among refugees in Minnesota over the past six years to at least 304. That also increases the number of active TB cases diagnosed among refugees over the past six years in the fifteen states in which Breitbart News has been able to…