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Whooping cough cases are soaring. Can infecting people help test a better vaccine?
CNN
Whooping cough is surging in the United States, with cases now five times higher than they were at the same point last year, according to preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was reported Friday.
Whooping cough is surging in the United States, with cases now five times higher than they were at the same point last year, according to preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was reported Friday. It’s the highest number of whooping cough infections since 2014, “with no indication of slowing down,” said Dr. Susan Hariri of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who presented the data Friday at a meeting of experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions. This year’s spike in cases marks a return to pre-pandemic levels of this infection, which is also called pertussis. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, whooping cough cases were trending upward in the US, because the vaccines that are currently used offer strong initial protection that wears off after two or three years. “We know that we do not have very good pertussis vaccines,” said Dr. Archana Chatterjee, a pediatric disease specialist and dean of the Chicago Medical School, at the meeting. “These vaccines have done a yeoman’s job for us for many decades, but they are not doing the job as well as they used to do,” said Chatterjee, who is a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.