The US states where a Victorian-era disease is spreading and causing worrying school outbreaks
Alabama and North Carolina have been added to the list of states battling outbreaks of a Victorian-era disease that has been ravaging the US for months.
There are now 123 cases of whooping cough, also known as whooping cough, in Alabama and 525 cases in North Carolina.
The disease, which is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, leads to severe coughing, fever, sore eyes and blue lips. In severe cases, it can lead to vomiting, exhaustion and breathing problems, and is fatal in about one percent of babies who become infected.
An outbreak started nationally in the spring, which subsided over the summer and started again in August. Doctors fear the disease will increase even further ahead of cold and flu season, as more and more viruses weaken the immune system and people are forced to stay indoors. cold weather.
So far in 2024, there have been five times as many cases as in 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 blame the increase mainly on a slowdown in vaccination rates since the pandemic.
The CDC recommends that children receive three vaccinations against the virus, called the Tdap shot, before the age of one. This injection is 98 percent effective in preventing diseases in children within a year of vaccination.
Whooping cough spreads 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, causing tissues to swell, leading to the cough characteristic of the condition.
In Alabama, the cases were discovered at high schools in Trussville and Springville, as well as at the University of Alabama Huntsville, in central and northern parts of the state.
The number of whooping cough cases in the state has increased by 300 percent in the past year – from 41 to 123 people, according to a report from the Alabama Department of Health.
In North Carolina, many of the cases were found in Bumbcombe County, located in the western part of the state and home to an estimated 275,900 citizens.
In the spring, there were nearly 120 cases in the state, but that number plateaued over the summer, according to ABC13 News.
Henderson County Department of Public Health spokesman Andrew Mundhenk said this most recent uptick “could be similar to what we saw in the spring.”
As of November 2 ABC 11 reported there have been 525 cases of the disease in the state, along with new outbreaks of measles and pneumonia.
Whooping cough is most commonly spread among children and teenagers, especially if they have close contact every day at school or daycare.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the disease because their immune systems are not yet fully developed, putting children under one year of age at greater risk of developing serious complications, such as breathing problems, from the bacteria.
The highly contagious bacteria is spread between people when someone who is sick coughs or sneezes into the air, and another person inhales or swallows those particles.
Symptoms appear about a week after the initial infection, after the bacteria attaches to tiny hairs in the throat and nose and begins releasing toxins that cause the airways to swell, according to the CDC.
This initially causes a runny or stuffy nose, low-grade fever and a mild cough, but can develop into severe coughing fits that lead to vomiting, exhaustion and breathing problems.
“Those who get these coughing fits say it is the worst cough of their lives,” according to the CDC website. About one percent of babies who get this disease die.
The disease killed huge swaths of the population, including thousands of children every 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 US newspaper The Guardian Mayo Clinic.
Currently, the CDC recommends that Americans receive a series of whooping cough vaccinations over the course of their lives. The vaccine developed to combat the disease also includes immunity against tetanus and diphtheria.
The above map shows vaccine exemption percentages by state for the 2022-2023 school year, with the top five states with the highest percentages of exemptions for all mandatory school vaccinations.
The first three shots are recommended when a baby turns two, four and six months old. They then recommend an injection between 15 and 18 months of age, an injection between four and six years of age and an injection around 11 years of age.
Thereafter, maintenance doses are recommended every ten years.
In children, the vaccine is 98 percent effective and in teenagers the vaccine is 73 percent effective in the year after their immunization.
Although the vaccine does not always prevent someone from getting sick, those who have been vaccinated tend to get less sick than those who have never received a vaccine.
However, overall vaccination rates among children have fallen sharply across the country.
The number of people forgoing Tdap vaccinations has increased since the early 2000s. In the US, the CDC currently reports that approximately 80.4 percent of children have been vaccinated against whooping cough by the age of one.
In Idaho, 12.1 percent of preschoolers attended school exempt from Tdap vaccination, as did 7.4 percent of preschoolers in Arizona and 8.1 percent of preschoolers in Utah.
Dr. Tina Tan, pediatric infectious disease physician at Northwestern University told NPR: ‘There is still a lot of vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxxers who don’t want to vaccinate their children.’
If someone develops the disease, a doctor may prescribe a number of different antibiotics.
Sometimes doctors prescribe these antibiotics to someone just because he or she has been exposed to someone with whooping cough, in an effort to stop the spread.