Whooping Cough On The Rise In NY: What To Know About Pertussis

LONG ISLAND, NY — The United States is seeing a rise in the number of whooping cough cases.

Nationally in 2024, cases are nearly five times higher than the previous year, with cases in the Middle Atlantic region increasing to 3,846 compared to 749 this time last year, or 413 percent, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control.

In New York, outside of New York City, there have been 1,118 cases so far in 2024, compared with 222 in 2023 — an increase of around 403 percent, according to the latest surveillance data from the agency.

A CDC spokesperson told Patch that the overall reported cases on the CDC’s website are preliminary information.

"Those numbers could change pending validation with state and local public health agencies. Due to potential lags in case reporting from states to CDC, states will have the best and most up-to-date data for local circumstances," the spokesperson said.

A state Department of Health spokesperson told Patch that so far this year there have been 1,192 cases, which is up 135 percent from last year's 508 for the area outside of New York City.

Nationally, there have been 14,569 cases of whooping cough in 2024, compared to 3,475 last year, according to the DEC's preliminary data. The totals include 291 new cases reported for the week ending Sept. 14, the data shows.

The bacterial illness owes its common name to the high-pitched “whoop” sound people, especially babies, make when they try to breathe during a violent coughing fit. Anyone can develop whooping cough, but the disease is especially dangerous for young children and can lead to serious complications, including pneumonia, brain damage, seizures, apnea, and death.

People who are infected with the bacteria that causes pertussis can spread it for weeks, often without realizing they are sick. Good hygiene practices, such as thorough hand-washing, are encouraged, but vaccines are the best protection against pertussis, according to the CDC.

Babies born in the United States routinely get the DTaP vaccine, which protects against whooping cough and two other diseases, diphtheria and tetanus. The vaccine works well to protect children against the latter two, but is less effective over time at preventing whooping cough. Boosters are recommended every 10 years or so.

Dr. Tina Tan, president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told NBC News that vaccine hesitancy seems to be driving the increase in whooping cough cases to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’ve been seeing increasing amounts of disease occurring in adolescents and the adult population because they’re not getting vaccinated like they should,” Tan said.

Also, social distancing practices that were common during the pandemic have fallen by the wayside, according to Dr. Thomas Nurray, a Yale Medicine pediatric infectious disease specialist.

“Levels of pertussis dropped dramatically when we were all masking, and now this huge increase is getting us back to pre-pandemic levels, and probably a little above that,” Murray said in a news release. “It’s a contagious respiratory virus that can spread fairly quickly through the population.”

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee met Friday to discuss the need for a longer-lasting and more effective pertussis vaccine. But until that happens, boosters are the best defense against the bacterial illness.

Infectious disease experts think whooping cough is probably more widespread in the United States than the CDC surveillance numbers suggest.

“For every case of whooping cough we find, there’s probably 10 of them out there that didn’t come to medical attention,” Dr. Jim Conway, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, told NBC.