The United States has witnessed a surge in whooping cough cases, reaching the highest annual total in a decade. Cases have jumped sixfold compared to the same period last year, with experts attributing the increase to a combination of factors, including waning vaccine protection, lower vaccination rates, and improved testing. Infants remain the most vulnerable to the bacterial infection, which can cause severe coughing fits and breathing difficulties.
The U.S. has recorded over 32,000 whooping cough cases this year, compared with around 5,100 as of mid-December last year. Infants are most vulnerable to the bacterial infection.Whooping cough cases in the U.S. have reached the highest annual total in a decade, with as many cases tallied in the last 12 weeks as in the entire rest of the year.That's a six-fold increase from the same time in 2023, when more than 5,100 cases had been recorded.
"They don’t have time in between those coughs to take a breath," said Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at University of California, Davis, Children’s Hospital."Sometimes, if it’s so severe, the kids end up being intubated or on a ventilator so that they can get oxygen." He added that most of the whooping cough patients he's seen have been unvaccinated and that he’s noticed a decline in vaccine coverage.
Whooping cough vaccination rates in the U.S. remain high, but they have declined over the last five years or so. Whereas more than 94% of children born between 2018 and 2019 had received at least three doses of the DTap vaccine by their second birthdays, the rate fell to around 92.5% for those born between 2020 and 2021, according to a
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