Whooping cough cases soar 600% despite reliable vaccine, experts say. What’s to blame?
Cases of whooping cough have skyrocketed this year, up 600% from the same period in 2023, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s now the highest it has been since 2019 following a drop during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a reliable vaccine readily available.
So, what is causing the unexpected spike?
It may be linked to vaccine misinformation and misunderstanding, health experts at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania said in a Dec. 17 report.
Is whooping cough the same as pertussis?
A recent survey found that some Americans not only don’t know what bacteria causes pertussis, but they also are unaware there are already vaccines.
“Almost a third of respondents (30%) are not sure if pertussis is the same as whooping cough (it is) and not sure (30%) whether a vaccine exists to prevent it (it does),” the policy center said.
Whooping cough is a respiratory infection caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis. The bacteria attach to the cilia, or small hair-like structures in the upper respiratory tract, and release toxins that force the airways to swell, according to the CDC.
A vaccine was developed and became available in the 1940s, putting an end to years of whooping cough significantly adding to increased childhood mortality in the early 20th century, the policy center said.
Now, there are two vaccines available to help prevent the infection, but less than half of Americans can correctly name all the diseases they protect against.
The Tdap — which covers tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis — is for those 7 and older, including those who are pregnant, while DTaP — which covers the same infections — is used in infants and young children, the CDC says.
But 34% of Americans said they weren’t sure what Tdap protected against, according to the policy center.
In total, only 29% of survey respondents could correctly choose the infections protected by Tdap while also knowing which infections were not included (polio, meningitis, dengue and zika were among the other options), health officials said.
“The MMR vaccine, which covers measles, mumps and rubella, is colloquially referred to as the measles vaccine,” policy center Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson said in the report. “Instead of speaking about the DTaP and Tdap vaccines and using the unfamiliar term ‘pertussis,’ public health communicators should reiterate that our best defense against whooping cough is the whooping cough vaccine.”
Many Americans also didn’t know the symptoms of whooping cough, the center said. The majority of people, 83%, could name the distinctive “whoop” sound caused by coughing fits, but only 44% recognized fever, 33% recognized vomiting and 30% recognized runny nose as other telltale symptoms, according to the report.
Conducted between Nov. 14 to 24, the survey sampled 1,771 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.
Vaccine-preventable illnesses could make a comeback
Whooping cough isn’t the only infection making a significant comeback in recent years despite decades of lowering case numbers and vaccine availability.
More than 50 countries around the world experienced large measles outbreaks in 2023, the CDC reported, a 60% increase from 2022.
Cases of polio have also increased recently, including an outbreak in Gaza, raising health experts’ alarm bells in the United States as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to take over as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, told reporters on Capitol Hill he supports the polio vaccine after news broke that a lawyer affiliated with him petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the polio vaccines’ approval, CNN reported.
Other comments throughout the years say differently, however. Kennedy told a podcast host in July 2023 that the vaccine caused soft-tissue cancers that killed more people than polio ever did, The New York Times reported, and argued “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”
Multiple studies have found this to be untrue, The New York Times reported.
Health experts have warned that other vaccine-preventable illnesses like whooping cough and measles could make even larger comebacks on Kennedy’s watch if he makes significant changes to vaccine policy, despite comments he made to NPR saying “we’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” KFF Health News reported.
Trump said Americans are “not going to lose the polio vaccine,” and other Republican lawmakers, including Mitch McConnell who is a childhood polio survivor, said they would push back against any efforts to limit polio vaccine access, CNN reported.
Kennedy has posted other vaccine misinformation on social media, including a January 2023 post on X, formerly Twitter, linking the HPV vaccine to cervical cancer. The article he shared came from an activist group he controls, and other posts from the group have been removed from platforms like Facebook for being incorrect.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Whooping cough cases soar 600% despite reliable vaccine, experts say. What’s to blame?."
