The US is experiencing a significant rise in whooping cough cases, with reported numbers reaching their highest point since 2014. Experts blame vaccine hesitancy for the surge, noting that adolescents and adults are particularly vulnerable if they haven't received booster shots.
“With the increase in vaccine hesitancy that has been going on since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re seeing outbreaks occurring in kids who are not vaccinated,” said Dr. Tina Tan, president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. said that 14,569 cases of whooping cough had been reported so far in 2024. That’s a significant increase over last year’s total of 3,475 cases.
“For every case of whooping cough we find, there’s probably 10 of them out there that didn’t come to medical attention,” said Dr. Jim Conway, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin.“We’ve been seeing increasing amounts of disease occurring in adolescents and the adult population because they’re not getting vaccinated like they should,” Tan said.
Doctors at Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., told NBC News that they hadn’t seen any recent cases of whooping cough. Georgia saw an uptick in whooping cough cases over the summer, said Dr. Andi Shane, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, but that’s since declined.“During the spring, we saw a high proportion of cases in adolescents,” said Dr.
Doctors worry most about newborn babies who become infected. Their tiny airways can’t handle the coughing fits associated with whooping cough, and they must often be put on ventilators to help them breathe.
Whooping Cough Pertussis Vaccine Hesitancy Outbreaks Respiratory Infection
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