Whooping cough cases on rise in Butte County

Here is a graph showing the number of pertussis outbreaks in the past four years.

Pertussis, or whooping cough cases have been on the rise this year, reaching 32 Butte County residents, all of whom live in Chico.

"I am sure there are cases that will come to our attention in Paradise, we just haven't received any reports from there yet," said Dr. Mark Lundberg, M.D., adding that until this fall there had been no reports of the illness in 2013.

Pertussis is a contagious disease with symptoms that cause a person to cough incessantly to the point where they have a hard time catching their breath, he said. Sometimes children especially will cough so much that they vomit or turn blue from trouble catching their breath.

"The term 'whooping cough' is usually referring to the sound you can hear when (people) keep coughing until they hardly have any breath left, and then at the end of that coughing spell they breath in deeply to suck in air," Lundberg said. Pertussis is spread differently than most other respiratory viruses, Lundberg noted.

"This particular virus spreads mainly from coughing in someone's face," he said, "whereas with influenza and some of the other colds, you touch something that has been coughed on or that mucus has gotten on, and then you get it on your hands and rub it in your eyes."

To protect oneself against pertussis Lundberg recommends individuals stay up-to-date on their vaccinations. The vaccine can be administered with the tetanus vaccine in both adults and children, which is called DTaP for kids and TdaP for adults. Vaccinations for pertussis in children begin at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, with their first booster shot at 15 months.

"You (also) get a booster for pertussis before you go into kindergarten," Lundberg said. He added that a new law was passed just a few years ago requiring a pertussis booster shot for students entering the seventh grade. The current recommendation is that all adults should have a booster shot for pertussis.

Lundberg said that this past year's spike in outbreaks of the disease brought figures of reports that are equal to the outbreak spike in 2010, where cases were spread throughout the county.

"I expect that with pertussis, every few years we will have a mini-spike," he said. He added that the reason we can't eliminate the disease is that professionals currently have no way of making the disease go extinct. He said that although the vaccine is the best way to prevent pertussis, that over time the vaccine's protection is going to begin to wane.

To help prevent the spread of the virus, Lundberg urges residents to practice proper coughing etiquette and to stay home if they have a cough and a fever.

"Whooping cough is really dangerous for infants, that is who we really worry about," he said. Or, he said, it can go away on its own in people who are healthy. Sometimes pertussis can continue for 10 weeks or more as a nagging cough."

