United States: Whooping cough cases are increasing in Iowa and this is according to state health officials. So far in this particular year, there have been 72 cases of whooping cough, which is the most since 2019. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services is keeping track of the situation closely.
Spread and Impact Across the State
Whooping cough, or pertussis is actually very highly contagious respiratory tract infection and it also causes lengthy and the repeated bouts of the coughing which can be sometimes lead to the infected individuals making a signature “Whoop” sound.
So the cases in Iowa have been increasing since May and the infections of whopping cough have been identified across the state, predominantly among the Iowans younger than 20 years said Alex Murphy spokesperson for Iowa HHS.
Hospital Admissions on the Rise
As reported by Des Moines Register Polk County has detected almost 4 cases from June 1 to the Aug 27 said Addie Olson, public health communication officer for the Polk County Health Department and the current case count is the higher than the local health officials would typically see in a year she added.
Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines confirmed that the hospital had one pediatric admission in the recent days for whooping cough.
From late June another case emerged in the hospital and they also hospitalized such patients, shared Dr. Aneesa Afroze, MercyOne Medical Center Infectious Disease Specialist & Director of Infection Prevention and Control, Hospital Epidemiology & Antimicrobial Stewardship.
“It’s a lot even if it’s two or three cases,” Afroze added.
Johnson County has also reported it has identified at least three cases in the past two weeks, more information from Sam Jarvis of Johnson County Public Health.
The current increase in new cases suggests the infection is coming back to where it was prior to the pandemic, according to state and federal health officers.
Trends and Historical Context
Whooping cough is normally endemic at a low rate in the world but the cases had reduced during COVID-19 period due to social distancing and other anti-coronavirus measures which reduced the transmission of the disease.
People were not congregating, people were quarantining, they were homeschooling,” Afroze said. “All of those things, I think, shielded us from respiratory infections. When those (mitigation efforts) ceased, we began to observe slightly higher levels of influenza and slightly higher levels of rhinovirus and pertussis. ”
National and Global Data
Yet, the cases identified state-wide each year since 2020 remained below the number in the years before the pandemic, according to Murphy. From 2015-2019 the number of pertussis cases in Iowa ranged from 163 to 276 per year.
The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention informs that based on the preliminary data overall COVID cases reported across the country through the first quarter of 2024 are “more than four times as many” as through the first quarter of 2023.
According to the data up to August 17, 2011 the number of reported pertussis cases till now is 11,500. According to the CDC there were a little more than 3,000 cases in the same time span of 2023.