Whooping Cough Rising Fast, Especially Among Teens

Whooping cough is surging in the US, with four times as many cases reported so far this year, compared to all of 2023. 

The CDC said 14,569 cases had been reported as of Sept. 14, compared to 3475 in all of 2023. 

There were 291 new cases reported for the week ending Sept. 14, with New York having the most cases, 44, followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma with 38 each. That’s the most cases in a single week since 2015.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, is a respiratory illness spread through coughing, sneezing, or breathing very close to another person. Babies are given the DTaP vaccine to protect against whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus. Because the vaccine effectiveness wanes faster for whooping cough than the two other illnesses, boosters are recommended every decade or so.

But many children in their tweens aren’t getting boosters, and that age group is driving the whooping cough outbreak.

“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,” Tina Tan, MD, president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, toldNBC News.

Also, people are not social distancing the way they did during the height of the COVID pandemic, when whooping cough numbers went down.

“Levels of pertussis dropped dramatically when we were all masking, and now this huge increase is getting us back to pre-pandemic levels, and probably a little above that,” Thomas Murray, MD, a Yale Medicine pediatric infectious diseases specialist, said in a news release from the school. “It’s a contagious respiratory virus that can spread fairly quickly through the population.”

A group of FDA advisers is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss developing more effective boosters for whooping cough.

SOURCES:

CDC: “Notifiable Infectious Disease Data Tables.”

NBC News: “Whooping cough spikes, especially among unvaccinated teens.”

Yale: “Whooping Cough (Pertussis) Is on the Rise: What to Know.”

FDA: “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee September 20, 2024 Meeting Announcement.”