Highly Contagious Respiratory Illness Continues To Spread: What To Know In NJ

NEW JERSEY — 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.

In New Jersey, there have been 128 cases so far in 2024, compared with 137 at this time in 2023. That indicates that no more cases have been identified since the last report in August, according to this previous Patch article.

However, cases in the Mid-Atlantic have increased to 3,846, compared to 749 this time last year, according to the latest surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the number of cases this year are also outstripping last year's numbers in neighboring Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware.

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

The New Jersey Department of Health is encouraging all residents to ensure they are up-to-date with their routine vaccines, maintain good hygiene practices, and to stay home when ill.

Dr. Uzma Hasan, Division Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at RWJBarnabas Health, also told Patch that it's important for children and adults to keep up their vaccinations against whooping cough, as infants are especially susceptible to the illness.

“If there is a new baby, all adults must be vaccinated, because they can bring it home,” she said.

Hasan also said because whooping cough is so easily transmitted, doctors will prescribe a course of antibiotics not just for the sick person, but for anyone who lives in the same household as them.

"It's highly contagious," she said. "If I have a household with a case of pertussis, 8 to 10 people will get it."

Whooping cough is caused by a bacteria that attaches to the tiny, hair-like cilia that line the upper respiratory system. These bacteria release toxins which damage the cilia, and cause airways to swell.

The 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.