This year's resurgence of whooping cough cases has now accelerated to the fastest pace on record in nearly a decade, according to figures published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as pertussis infections are now again climbing around the country during the back-to-school season. A total of 291 cases were reported for the week ending on Sept. 14, the CDC says .
New York has reported the most cases this week of any state, with 44 infections. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma have also reported at least 38 cases each. This now marks the most infections of the bacteria Bordatella pertussis reported to the CDC in a single week since 2015, when the country was coming off a resurgence of whooping cough cases that had peaked the year before.
Whooping cough disease, caused by the pertussis bacteria, typically starts around a week after people are first exposed to another contagious person. Symptoms can last for weeks to months, typically with the disease's infamous "whooping" as patients struggle to breathe after facing a burst of coughs. So far this year, 14,569 cases have been reported to the agency, more than four times higher than the number of infections reported by this time last year.
Cases are also higher than the more than 10,000 cases that were reported by this time in 2019, before COVID-19 pandemic measures also caused plummeting cases of pertussis and other infections that spread through the air. The need for better whooping cough vaccines While u.