Alabama and North Carolina have joined the list of states battling outbreaks of a Victorian-era disease that has been rocking the United States for months.
There are currently 123 cases of whooping cough, also known as whooping cough, in Alabama and 525 cases in North Carolina.
The disease, caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis, causes a violent cough, fever, sore eyes and blue lips. In severe cases, this can cause vomiting, exhaustion and breathing problems, and is fatal in about one percent of babies who contract the virus.
In the spring, a nationwide outbreak began that gradually subsided over the summer, then reappeared in August. Doctors fear the illness could increase even further heading into cold and flu season, as more viruses weaken people’s immune systems and people are forced to stay indoors due to cold weather.
So far, 2024 has seen five times as many cases as 2023, with more than 16,000 Americans infected, according to an October update from the CDC. There have been two confirmed deaths.
Most cases have been detected in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts and Arizona.
Public health officials primarily attribute this increase to lagging vaccination rates since the pandemic.
The CDC recommends that children receive three vaccines against the virus, called the Tdap vaccine, by the age of one. This vaccine is 98 percent effective in preventing disease in children during the year following vaccination.
Whooping cough is spread from person to person through airborne droplets from coughing or sneezing. Once in the body, the bacteria multiply and release toxins into the respiratory system that cause the tissues to swell, causing the cough characteristic of the condition.
In Alabama, cases were detected at high schools in Trussville and Springville, as well as at the University of Alabama Huntsville in the central and northern parts of the state.
Whooping cough cases have increased in the state by 300 percent over the past year, going from 41 people to 123 people, according to a report from the Alabama Department of Public Health.
In North Carolina, many of the cases were found in Bumbcombe County, which is located in the western part of the state and is home to approximately 275,901 citizens.
In the spring, there were nearly 120 cases in the state, but that number dropped over the summer, according to ABC13 News.
Henderson County Public Health Department spokesman Andrew Mundhenk said this increase may be: “similar to what we saw in the spring.”
Starting November 2nd, ABC 11 reported that there have been 525 cases of the disease in the state, along with new outbreaks of measles and pneumonia.
Whooping cough is most often spread among children and adolescents, especially when they are in close daily contact at school or daycare.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the disease because their immune systems are not fully developed, putting those under one year of age at greater risk of developing serious complications, such as respiratory problems, from the bacteria.
The highly infectious bacteria is spread between people when someone sick with the condition coughs or sneezes into the air and another person inhales or swallows those particles.
Symptoms appear about a week after initial infection, after the bacteria attaches to small hairs in the throat and nose and begins to release toxins that cause inflammation of the airways, according to the CDC.
At first, this causes a runny or stuffy nose, a low-grade fever, and a mild cough, but it can progress to violent coughing spells that cause vomiting, exhaustion, and trouble breathing.
“Those who experience these coughing fits say it is the worst cough of their lives,” the CDC website details. About one percent of babies who get this disease die.
The disease used to kill large sections of the population, including thousands of children each year, according to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
Those rates began to decline after the development of the first whooping cough vaccine in 1948, according to Mayo Clinic.
Currently, the CDC recommends that Americans receive a series of pertussis vaccines throughout their lives. The vaccine developed to combat the disease also contains immunity against tetanus and diphtheria.
The map above shows state-by-state vaccine exemption rates for the 2022-2023 school year, highlighting the top five states with the highest percentages of exemptions for all required school vaccines.
The first three injections are recommended when the baby is two, four and six months old. Next, they recommend one injection between 15 and 18 months, one injection between four and six years old, and one injection around age 11.
After that, maintenance doses are recommended every decade.
In children, the vaccine is 98 percent effective in the year following immunization. In adolescents, the vaccine is 73 percent effective in the year following immunization.
Although the vaccine does not always prevent someone from getting sick, those who have been vaccinated tend to get sick less than those who have never received a vaccine.
However, vaccination rates have been plummeting among children.
The number of people forgoing the Tdap vaccine has been increasing since the early 2000s. In the US, the CDC currently reports that about 80.4 percent of children have been vaccinated against whooping cough at one year of age.
In Idaho, 12.1 percent of kindergartners entered school with exemptions from the Tdap vaccine, as did 7.4 percent of Arizona kindergartners and 8.1 percent of Utah kindergartners.
Dr. Tina Tan, pediatric infectious diseases physician at Northwestern University he told NPR: “There are still many doubts about vaccines and there are anti-vaccines who do not vaccinate their children.”
If someone contracts the disease, a doctor can prescribe several different antibiotics.
Sometimes doctors prescribe these antibiotics to a person just because they have been exposed to someone with whooping cough, in an effort to slow the spread.