Whooping cough is surging in the United States, 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.
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.
Why the Whooping Cough Vaccine Is Important
Whooping cough is a very contagious bacteria, so vaccination is an important step to avoid it.
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, told NBC 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.”
FDA advisers were scheduled to meet Sept. 20 to discuss developing more effective boosters for whooping cough.
A version of this article appeared on WebMD.com.