Whooping cough cases in the U.S. have quadrupled in less than a year, CDC says : NPR

An infant receives a routine vaccination at First Georgia Physician Group Pediatrics in Fayetteville, Georgia, in 2021. Infectious disease experts say a reduction in in-person visits during the pandemic meant children were not able to keep their whooping cough vaccinations up to date.

Angie Wang/AP

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Angie Wang/AP

The number of whooping cough cases in the United States has more than quadrupled since last year, according to data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Infectious disease experts believe the surge in whooping cough cases is due to a decline in vaccination rates that began during the pandemic.

“Children during COVID aren't seeing health care providers, and they may have had telehealth care, but they can't be vaccinated through a computer,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “and we're not all back to normal vaccination levels yet.”

The whooping cough vaccines, called DTap and TDap, also protect against diphtheria and tetanus and provide the most effective prevention against whooping cough and its complications.

Previous studies have raised concerns that the pertussis vaccine's effectiveness may be short-lived, leading some experts to Calling for a new vaccine.

Reported pertussis cases are returning to pre-pandemic levels, when there were more than 10,000 cases in the United States each year. The CDC announced in JulyThe agency recorded This year, 14,569 cases That's up from a total of 3,475 cases recorded so far last year.

The states that have the most cases are Pennsylvania, New York and California, in that order, with Pennsylvania recording 2,008 cases so far this year, nearly double California's number.

Because the early symptoms of whooping cough can be mistaken for a cold or other respiratory illness, it often goes unnoticed until it becomes severe.

The difficulty in diagnosing the disease makes it easier for people to unintentionally spread it, said Dawn Nolt, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, Oregon.

“For the first week or so when you get sick, it looks similar to any other respiratory illness,” she says, “but it could actually be whooping cough, and you're just spreading it to people around you.”

What makes whooping cough different from other respiratory illnesses is that it causes a long, unremitting cough that lasts for at least three weeks and in some cases can persist for years. That could take several months, Nolt said.

Vanderbilt's Schaffner said inflammation of the mucous membranes often leads to debilitating coughing fits.

“It's not one or two coughs, it's a series of coughs that make it hard to breathe,” he says, “and then when you're pretty exhausted, the coughing fit finally ends, you take a breath, and that's the 'whoosh' sound.”

However, your baby may not cough as much, but rather may have difficulty breathing or may stop breathing intermittently.

The CDC recommends the DTaP vaccine for infants and children under age 7. Older children and adults are recommended to receive the vaccine plus a booster shot every 10 years.

The most severe cases occur in infants, whose airways are more likely to become blocked, Schaffner said. Because infants cannot be vaccinated until they are 2 months old, the CDC is recommending that pregnant women get vaccinated. Early in the third trimester To protect newborns.

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