Alaska state health officials say rates of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, are the highest they’ve been in over 10 years.
As of last Friday, the state had recorded 234 cases, most of them in July and August.
“And just for context, we had 149 cases reported in 2016, and that was the previous highest year in the past eight years,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin said on Talk of Alaska on Tuesday.
McLaughlin said rates of whooping cough have reached epidemic levels in Alaska. The illness has led to hospitalizations across the state and the death of an infant, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The Anchorage School District has also recently reported cases or suspected cases across about a half-dozen schools.
McLaughlin said whooping cough tends to go through cycles in the United States every three to five years due to declining immunity from vaccines and newborns catching it before getting vaccinated. It’s also very similar to other respiratory viruses like COVID-19 or the flu, and can be mistaken for other diseases during the fall cold season.
Dr. Robert Lawrence, Alaska’s chief medical officer, said what sets whooping cough apart is what comes after your typical cold symptoms.
“What makes pertussis different, that parents should pay attention to, is that after that early stage of the runny nose, the cough, a little bit of irritability, is sudden trouble with breathing,” he said. “Just this sudden onset of a series of coughs that’s just, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, and you can’t even take a breath in.”
Lawrence added that it’s important to catch pertussis early in children, particularly babies less than a year old. While it can feel like a mild cold for adults, he said, one in three children less than a year old who get the disease will need to be hospitalized.
“It’s important, those early signs of illness, especially in the first year of life, to bring that to your physician’s attention and make sure that the child is checked, because we can test and see if the cause is pertussis, and if so, we can treat that,” he said.
Madilyn Rose is the program producer at Alaska Public Media. Reach her atmrose@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Madilynhere.
