The serious increase in the incidence of whooping cough is a clear warning to parents of infants.
Caitlin Sullivan NBCNews
Outbreaks of whooping cough (or whooping cough) ravaging Europe, Asia and parts of the United States are a reminder of the need to get vaccinated, experts say.
Since January, the number of whooping cough cases has risen sharply in the UK and the rest of Europe, the biggest increase since 2012. China reported more than 15,000 cases in January, 15 times more than the same month last year. Small outbreaks have been reported among high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as a few isolated cases in Hawaii. From October to the start of the year, New York experienced an outbreak that resulted in more than 200 cases, mostly among young children.
What’s happening?
Whooping cough or Bordetella whooping cough The name given to the bacteria that causes the disease is a highly contagious respiratory disease that is spread through small respiratory droplets. Thanks to widespread vaccination in the United States, the disease is under control, but there are isolated cases, usually mild, in vaccinated people.
“Several health departments have informed us of local outbreaks that we expect to see every year,” said Jasmine Reed, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “We don’t see anything unusual.”
Whooping cough cases in the United States in 2024 will remain lower than before the coronavirus pandemic: typically around 20,000 per year. However, there was an outbreak in 2012 that affected nearly 50,000 people, according to the CDC.
Annual cases fell sharply in the first two years of the pandemic, to 6,100 in 2020 and just 2,100 a year later. Wearing masks and physical distancing has disrupted the normal cycle of many respiratory illnesses, including colds, RSV and influenza.
“The coronavirus pandemic may have disrupted the normal whooping cough cycle because people did not get vaccinated on time and families did not visit their doctors as often as we would like,” said Thomas Murray, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the School. Medicine from Yale University.
Warning signs for babies
Whooping cough causes coughing attacks that make breathing difficult.
“When it finally stops, you take a breath and it sounds like exclamationexplains William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
In adults and children, it may feel like a cold with a runny nose and cough. But in young children the infection can be much more serious.
(CDC warns that eliminating measles in the United States is “in jeopardy”).
Whooping cough inflames the bronchi, or airways, of babies, making it difficult for them to breathe. The most common complication of infection is pneumonia, which can be fatal. According to the CDC, 307 people died from whooping cough between 2000 and 2017. Almost 85% of them were infants under 2 months of age.
“It’s called whooping cough, but very young babies don’t always cough, they stop breathing,” Murray said, adding that the first thing parents should remember is that anyone sick should try to visit their newborn. “For babies themselves, any temperature above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit is something the pediatrician should be aware of,” she adds.
If a child’s lips turn blue or they don’t seem to be breathing as usual, “that’s a cause for concern, especially if they’ve been around someone who’s sick.”
The CDC recommends that infants be vaccinated with DTaP, which prevents diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough, starting at 2 months of age. The series included four more vaccines: at 4 and 6 months, at ages 15 to 18 months, and at ages 4 to 6 years.
“The concern is that many children were not vaccinated regularly during Covid-19,” adds Schaffner, “and now experts are trying to catch up.”
The DTPa vaccine, designed to trigger an immune response in infants whose systems are less developed than children, is 98% effective in preventing whooping cough in the first year after a series of five doses, according to the CDC.
Teens and adults may need reinforcement.
The Tdap vaccine is recommended for children 11 years of age and older who have not received the DTaP series or for adults who may need a booster dose.
“It is important that all adults receive a dose of Tdap. After that, they should receive a Td or Tdap vaccine every 10 years,” added the CDC’s Reed, noting that protection wanes over time.
(CDC Finds COVID-19 Vaccines Not Linked to Fatal Heart Problems in Young People)
Vaccinating adults protects children from whooping cough and reduces the incidence of the disease if a vaccinated person becomes ill. But “compliance with this rule is not optimal because it opens the door for older people to become infected,” Schaffner said.
Although whooping cough can be dangerous in older adults, the main concern is that an adult will pass the bacteria to an unvaccinated newborn.
“Anyone coming to visit a newborn should have recently been vaccinated with the Tdap vaccine to provide additional protection for the baby,” Schaffner added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises women to get the vaccine with every pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that pregnant women receive the Tdap vaccine in the third trimester. According to the CDC, this vaccine prevents about 78% of whooping cough cases and 90% of hospitalizations in children under 2 months.
Do bacteria mutate?
In 2019, CDC researchers found that the bacteria that causes whooping cough has changed over time, which could make current vaccines less protective than before.
“It is unclear what impact, if any, these changes will have on the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Reed explained.
Schaffner said the vaccines still provide significant protection and are currently the best method of protection.
“It’s not like the flu. “It mutates very slowly, and these strains are related enough to each other that the vaccine continues to work,” he said.
(Identification of diseases in newborns varies depending on the condition and diagnosis is not always made on time)
The flu virus mutates quickly, just like the coronavirus, so vaccines against these diseases must be updated every year. The DTPa and Tdap vaccines do not change their composition.
The current outbreaks are not a cause for concern, but parents of newborns should know how to best protect their babies.
“This will not become a pandemic because we have a well-vaccinated population,” Schaffner said. “However, let’s make sure pregnant women are vaccinated, infants are vaccinated on schedule, and the rest of us are vaccinated against Tdap every 10 years.”