A conversation with Seattle
All things being equal, you would rather not have pertussis in Philadelphia, where there is evidence of a vaccine-resistant strain of pertussis springing up. The CDC is downplaying the discovery a bit, because the resistance discovered affects just one component of the acellular whooping cough vaccine. Continue reading Pertussis Vaccine Challenged by the Rise of Pertactin Mutants
Search on “vaccination” in the iTunes app store, and you’ll see a wealth of results, from the American College of Physicians Immunization Advisor (aimed at medical professionals) to all-in-one milestone-guide apps like Baby Sense and Tot Tracker, which include vaccination suggestions. (There are also apps that sort out travel vaccinations for you.) Continue reading Smartphone Apps Track Vaccination Shots for Tots
“Infants younger than 6 months account for 90 percent of all pertussis-related deaths and the majority of hospitalizations,” reads the Seattle & King County Public Health brief on whooping cough (pertussis). That statistic came into stark relief last Thursday, when a newborn baby died from a cases of pertussis. Continue reading In King County, a Baby Has Died of Whooping Cough
“After the fifth dose of DTaP, the odds of acquiring pertussis increased by an average of 42% per year,” the study’s authors write. Said another way, the overall protection rate of the DTaP vaccine declines to 71 percent from 95 percent by the fifth year after the fifth shot.
For context, unvaccinated children have odds of getting whooping cough “at least eight times higher than children who received all five doses” of DTaP (CDC pdf). Continue reading Whooping Cough Vaccine (DTaP) Not as Long-Lived as Thought
As you can see from the chart above, whooping cough has exploded from its edging-into-epidemic levels of last year, and Washington has yet to face the fall and winter. The CDC’s report on Washington’s epidemic records a 1,300-percent increase in the number of cases, the worst outbreak in the state since 1942–but that was as of June 16. Continue reading Whooping Cough Epidemic in Washington Now Up 1,300% From 2011
A little over a month since whooping cough crossed the epidemic threshold in Washington State, political officials seem persuaded that the nagging cough is not going to go away on its own. Last week, Governor Gregoire announced that she’d be making available, along with $210,000 already allocated from the Department of Health, an extra $90,000 from the emergency fund to combat pertussis. Continue reading What’s Washington Doing to Stem Our Whooping Cough Epidemic?
End of March 2012, the Washington State Department of Health announced that, technically speaking, whooping cough (pertussis) had reached epidemic levels. Now, almost a month later, the news is actually worse: “There have been a total of 1,008 cases reported statewide through week 16, compared to 110 reported cases in 2011 during the same time period.”
If that trend continues, for a total of 3,000 cases in 2012, it would mark the worst outbreak in 60 years in Washington, reports KING TV. Continue reading Welcome to Washington, the Whooping Cough State